Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Robathan: There is a question whether access has improved throughout the country. I have been telling Ministers for some time that the majority of my constituents, me and my family cannot find an NHS dentist in Leicestershire. That is the fact. Access is not better. The review announced last week is an admission of the failure of the contract. Instead of a review, how about the Government saying what they are going to do about this now to improve access to NHS dentistry?

Paul Beresford: I have a slight interest in this matter, as is well known. The Minister will be aware that there are 13,000 people with oral cancer at any one time in the UK. About 50 per cent. of those people will die, and the mortality rate is getting worse, not better. The key is access—and I believe, as do dentists, that the key to access is the contract. There has been a implementation group running for some time—I do not know its name because it has changed. What suggestions has it made to the Minister to change that contract to make it more desirable for dentists to work for the national health service?

Tim Farron: I thank the Minister for his answer. My constituent, Mr. David Jones of Elterwater, is just one of the many hundreds of innocent UK victims who have suffered severe health problems as a result of taking the anti-arthritis drug Vioxx. Following the landmark victory of Les Thomas in last week's court case in Cambridge and the £4.85 billion settlement already paid to American victims by Merck and Co., will the Government now put pressure on Merck to ensure that all patients whose health has been damaged by Vioxx are given the compensation they deserve?

Andrew Murrison: The Government have shown themselves willing to qualify the autonomy of primary care trusts when they feel it necessary to do so. Why then are they ignoring the huge disparity that exists between the best and worst performing primary care trusts in terms of the drug-prescribing habits of their practitioners and the related costs?

Ben Bradshaw: I am nervous about intruding on what I understand to be the historic but friendly rivalry between Blackburn and Burnley. Seriously, however, I understand the organisation of services there to be a result of what clinicians felt would be the best way to concentrate specialist accident and emergency care in Blackburn and elective planned surgery in Burnley, which would avoid some of the cancellation problems that his local hospital was experiencing because of the need to deal also with accident and emergency cases. He will also be aware that the democratic check on those organisations—in his case, the Lancashire overview and scrutiny committee—strongly supported the proposals. The recent problems that he mentions happen in many accident and emergency services when there are particular, localised and sudden pressures, and they are not peculiar to the reorganisation to which he refers.

Ben Bradshaw: Yes, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The decision at local level is made on a case-by-case basis, but he is right to draw attention to the benefits of urgent care centres in terms of reducing the pressure on, and unnecessary referrals to, accident and emergency departments.

Ben Bradshaw: "Lower increases" would, I think, be a more accurate description of future spending projections. Of course, last week we announced annual increases of 5.5 per cent. and 5.5 per cent. for PCTs in each of the next two years. There will be lower increases from the Government, but there would be cuts from the Opposition, were they to get into government.
	The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I commend the thoughtful remarks that he made at the King's Fund discussion either today or yesterday, which I read. He is right to say that high-quality care is often the most cost-effective care. There is no doubt—this is the pattern not just in this country but in other countries around the world—that when it comes to accident and emergency services it is safer, better and more effective to concentrate care in a smaller number of specialist units. It is often better for people to travel a little bit further to those specialist units in terms of their survival rates and health outcomes.

Ben Bradshaw: Very good progress, I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman. However, he will have to be a little bit more patient before we make a formal announcement.

Ben Bradshaw: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was pleased to announce last week that North Yorkshire and York primary care trust will receive an 11.6 per cent. increase in funding over the next two years. That places my hon. Friend's primary care trust in the top quarter in terms of the increase in allocations that it will receive.

Alan Johnson: The operating framework that we issued this year has been well received in the NHS. We have ensured that instead of trying to prioritise everything, and thus prioritising nothing, we have focused attention on health care acquired-infections, which are a huge issue for older people, particularly the over-65s; dementia; and greater patient involvement. Those priorities all apply to older people. The dementia strategy, which we will shortly publish, is of particular benefit to older people, as is the debate on the reform of adult social care which, although not restricted to the over-65s, is very much the focus of that report.

Patrick McFadden: I have the greatest respect for my hon. Friend, and I can assure him that this company will remain publicly owned in line with the manifesto on which we fought and won the last general election. Bringing in a partner on a minority basis will give three advantages. It will give the advantage of the experience of having gone through change in a major postal company, which Royal Mail has not yet gone through. It will bring the confidence to carry through the decisions necessary for such change, and it will bring access to the capital needed to fund the modernisation. That is why it is an important part of the package that we have proposed today.

John Thurso: I thank the Minister for giving me an advance copy of the statement and notice of the salient points. It is clear from a rapid reading of Mr. Hooper's report that it is a serious body of work that sets out in clear terms the challenges facing Royal Mail, and that it offers significant and major proposals. Mr. Hooper and his team should be congratulated on their work; in broad terms, the report deserves a cautious welcome.
	For our constituents who value their postal service and their postmen and women, the key issue was always the maintenance of the universal service obligation, involving collection and delivery six days a week. I welcome the fact that it was clearly stated in the report and in the Minister's statement that the universal service obligation is to be maintained. However, as the statement makes clear, that objective requires a profitable Royal Mail, and that poses formidable challenges. I should like to ask the Minister some questions on these points.
	Dealing with the pension deficit will clearly be critical. That burden must be dealt with and, unlike the Conservative spokesman, I believe that that proposal should, in broad terms, be welcomed. However, it raises two clear questions. First, will the Minister tell us which of the assets are to be transferred? Will it be all of them, or will some be left with the Post Office? Secondly, can he confirm that Royal Mail will continue to operate a pension scheme in the way that it has in the past, and that it will continue to be funded out of profits, as it has been in the past?
	The report proposes a partnership, but leaves the detail to the Government. The statement, however, said that a private company would take a minority stake in the postal business. The former does not necessarily mean privatisation because it could be a joint venture into which both companies enter with no transfer of assets; the latter, however, requires a stake to be sold, which is part-privatisation, and requires a valuation. How will the Minister set about valuing that stake if that route is indeed chosen?
	There is much in the statement that will need very careful scrutiny—for example, the regulatory changes look sensible broadly, but the manner in which they are conducted will have considerable impact on the future of the Royal Mail. Another example is the arrangements for the Post Office—arrangements that closely mirror the policies set out by the Liberal Democrats three years ago when we began to look at this problem. On the arrangements for postal competitors, it seems to me—I hope the Minister will accept this—that there is a requirement for a level playing field, and that we should look again into how to achieve that and into whether competitors should be required to pay in any way.
	Those are details that must be gone into. The report is serious and needs to be taken seriously. As the Minister said and as the report makes clear, however, the status quo is no longer an option, as we recognised in our paper on the subject of three years ago. The devil will almost certainly be in the detail, as it is always is, so I end by asking the Minister for a clear commitment to a full debate on this subject at an early opportunity.

Peter Hain: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that legislation is needed to allow a private competitor to come in and take a stake? Does that not open the door to full-scale privatisation, which is against the wishes of our party and our Government? Will he also confirm that taking the pension fund on to the Government's balance sheet effectively lifts a burden of perhaps £700 million off the Royal Mail's balance sheet, so it either fattens the calf for a future privatisation or leaves the Royal Mail without that liability in a much more effective position to compete as a fully owned public-sector organisation? Is not the real villain of the piece, notwithstanding the threat of electronic communication, the problem of unfair competition rigged against the Royal Mail in favour of private competitors, which undermines the universal service obligation and the ability of the Royal Mail to deliver it? Is not that the real problem that needs to be reformed?

Peter Luff: I am not sure how much I will help the Minister when I say that I think that the review team has done an excellent job and that the Government's indication that they intend to accept the broad thrust of the recommendations is a sensible decision indeed. Post Office Ltd and Royal Mail Group both face huge challenges and the report recognises the scale of those challenges, but huge numbers of questions on the details remain to be answered. For example, what will the relationship between Post Office Ltd and Royal Mail Group be in this new world, with a part-owned subsidiary run by a current competitor of Royal Mail Group? The regulatory changes needed to bring Postcomm into Ofcom are clearly important as far as Richard Hooper is concerned, but again legislation will be required. Over what time scale can we expect that legislation?

Phyllis Starkey: The fact that the Hooper report has now been published is welcome, as it allows decisions to be taken and discussed in the context of the whole picture instead of the piecemeal way in which they have been announced thus far. The mail processing centre in my constituency is one of those under threat. Would the Minister agree to meet with a delegation from that mail processing centre so that he can understand the context of the decisions that are being made for my constituents, including both those served by and those working in the centre?

Andrew MacKay: I congratulate the Minister on his courageous decision to part-privatise Royal Mail and assure him that when he introduces the legislation we will vote for it, so that—despite the clear number of Labour rebels that there will be—he will get it through?

Russell Brown: I thank my hon. Friend for the commitment that he has given to the universal service obligation, which means so much to a rural constituency such as mine. I and a number of Labour colleagues met the regulator before he took up post and officially started to liberalise the service. We warned the then Secretary of State and Ministers with the relevant responsibilities that we were about to see a butchering of the service. What happened in such a short space of time should never have happened to the extent to which it did. It is not beyond the wit of the work force or the Royal Mail management team to deliver for this country what we require without the interference—I shall put it no more strongly at this point—of a third party to partner the business.

Jack Straw: With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the opening up of the family courts. I have today laid before Parliament the document "Family Justice in View", copies of which will be available in the Vote Office and on my Department's website.
	Family courts play a crucial role in our society. They make far-reaching decisions—for example about how to divide finance on divorce, or what protection to give victims of domestic violence—and they make life-changing decisions about the future of children: whether they should be given contact with their parents, whether they should be removed into the care of the state, and whether they should be placed for adoption. The decisions of family courts have profound and long-term effects on the lives of those involved and cumulatively on society as a whole.
	Family cases can be conducted in the magistrates family proceedings courts, in county courts, and in the family division of the High Court. All those with responsibility for these proceedings are well trained and work to extremely high standards. It is vital that these courts, like any others, command the confidence of the public, if the public—including the parties involved—are to accept their decisions. That can best be achieved if justice in these courts is seen to be done.
	For entirely legitimate reasons, the privacy of parties to family proceedings must be properly protected. That is of enormous importance to adults, and is an overwhelming imperative in cases involving children. At present, with some exceptions, neither the public nor the media are permitted to witness proceedings in these courts. However, many argue that the current provisions to safeguard privacy and confidentiality go too far, leaving family courts unfairly open to accusations of bias or even injustice.
	In contrast, there is a greater degree of openness in the youth courts. For example, the media are allowed to witness and report proceedings in the youth courts, so long as they do not identify juvenile defendants, and youth courts have a wide discretion to allow others to attend. These rules have worked effectively, and both their spirit and their letter have been well respected by the media.
	The debate about opening up the family courts has intensified in recent years, and two successive consultations have been carried out, in 2006 and again in 2007. The results of those exercises were inconclusive, with strong representations on the one hand in favour of improving transparency, and on the other in favour of maintaining the current position.
	In the past few months, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), who has responsibility for access to justice, and I have been actively considering how we can shed more light on family courts while preserving the imperative of the welfare of the child. The Government have now reached their conclusion, and I am therefore announcing today that the rules of court will be changed to allow the media to attend family proceedings in all tiers of court.
	Understandably, the media will be subject to reporting restrictions similar to those that apply in the youth courts. The courts will be able to relax or increase those restrictions in appropriate cases, and will have the power to exclude the media from specific proceedings altogether where the welfare of the child or the safety of the parties or witnesses requires it. The overall effect of these changes will be fundamentally to increase the openness of family courts, while protecting the privacy of children and vulnerable adults.
	As well as allowing the media to attend family proceedings, there is a need to increase the amount and quality of information coming from the courts. At present, anonymised judgments of the Court of Appeal, and in some instances of the High Court, are made public, but that is not the situation for the county courts or the family proceedings courts, which deal with the bulk of family law cases.
	We have therefore decided to pilot the provision of written judgments when a final order is made in certain family cases. The courts in the pilot areas—Leeds, Wolverhampton and Cardiff—will, for the first time, routinely produce a written record of the decision for the parties involved. In selected cases, where the court is making life-changing decisions for a child, it will publish an anonymised judgment online, so that it can be read by the wider public.
	The consequences of family proceedings are so significant that the parties involved will sometimes need to seek advice or support from a range of people, including legal advisers, family members, medical practitioners and Members of Parliament or other elected representatives. To do so, they must be able to discuss and share information about their case. In 2005, we made changes to the rules of court to allow people to disclose certain information to specified individuals, but after two years it became clear that those rules remained unnecessarily restrictive and too complicated. Following a consultation last year, the Government have now decided to relax the rules on the disclosure of information in family proceedings.
	Parties and legal representatives will be able to disclose more information for the purpose of advice and support, mediation, the investigation of a complaint, or—in an anonymised form—for training and research. In more cases, the person receiving the information will be able to disclose it to others, for the purposes for which it was originally disclosed to them, without seeking the permission of the court. To protect the anonymity of children after proceedings have concluded, the decision of the Court of Appeal in Clayton  v. Clayton will be reversed. In principle, that decision removed the protection of the court once proceedings had been completed, although that protection could be reapplied in particular cases.
	Most of the key changes that I have announced today can be made in the rules of court, without the need for primary legislation, but some will require legislation, including the reversal of the effect of the decision in Clayton  v . Clayton and the potential opening-up of adoption proceedings. As regards the latter, we will consult on the most appropriate approach.
	The Government are committed to improving the visibility of justice in this country—to lifting the veil that sometimes keeps justice from view. The measures that I have outlined today will help to build a transparent, accountable family justice system that inspires the confidence of the people whom it serves, while continuing to protect the privacy of the parties and children involved. I commend the statement to the House.

Nick Herbert: I thank the Justice Secretary for early sight of his statement. The UN convention on the rights of the child states that
	"In all actions concerning children...the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration."
	Some argue that privacy in family courts is essential to that end, but would the Justice Secretary agree with me that the privacy of the child and the interests of the child are not necessarily always the same thing? Secrecy can also mean a lack of accountability, which in turn leads to poor decision making. Does not the terrible case of baby P remind us that where the welfare of children is concerned, poor decisions can have catastrophic effects?
	The Constitutional Affairs Committee concluded in 2005:
	"A greater degree of transparency is required in the family courts."
	Speaking for the Conservatives in 2006, my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) said that
	"we need to open up the closed doors a bit more."—[ Official Report, Westminster Hall, 12 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 164WH.]
	Would the Justice Secretary concede, in the spirit of transparency, that the Government have been rather less sure about whether to open the door? In 2006, the previous Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, made firm proposals to allow the press in. By 2007 he had changed his mind, arguing that "the welfare of children" was "at stake." Now the Government have changed their mind again. Within three years, the Department has changed its identity once, and its proposals twice. The Justice Secretary says that he has now reached a conclusion, but he also says that he is presenting proposals. Are they final?
	We all recognise that this is a difficult issue, but is not the problem with secrecy that it ignores the issue of public confidence in the court process? The president of the family division, Sir Mark Potter, has spoken of
	"an age of transparency...amidst largely misplaced criticisms of 'secret justice'".
	Does not the experience of countries such as New Zealand and, closer to home, Scotland, demonstrate that properly regulated transparency is perfectly workable?
	May I press the Justice Secretary on adoption proceedings, about which he is consulting further? Does he agree that, while there should be a presumption against openness in the final hearings, in which delicate and sensitive decisions are made, it is important to have scrutiny in the opening stages, in which the work of social workers, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and the National Youth Advocacy Service needs to be monitored?
	Does the Justice Secretary recognise the increased stress on children that may result from the presence of the media in court, and the fact that many professionals such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have serious concerns about that? Is he confident that the press will be as compliant with reporting restrictions as they are, for example, in New Zealand? Will all journalists be allowed into court, or only those who are accredited? Crucially, what sanctions for breaching reporting restrictions does he envisage? The Government previously proposed new legislation to ensure strong sanctions to protect anonymity. Does that proposal stand, and will third parties with a legitimate interest be permitted to attend, as they are in other countries?
	A key concern for families is that they are unable to raise their cases with the media, but it appears that the Government's proposed rules for disclosure will still prevent them from doing so. Will the Justice Secretary confirm that, and explain why he believes it is right to maintain that restriction? When the Government last proposed transparency in 2006, they recognised, in the regulatory impact assessment, that both they and the courts would face increased costs, including for additional security. Have the Government estimated these costs? At a time when the courts' budget is being cut, how will those costs be absorbed? Is not the fact that the Government are piloting the provision of written judgements in only three courts evidence of concern that the resource implications could be considerable?
	There are important questions about how transparency in family courts will operate, but does the Justice Secretary agree with me that child protection can no longer be a secret business? It is time to shine a bright light of public scrutiny to ensure that the most vulnerable in our society are protected. With proper safeguards, transparency is a force for good.

Jack Straw: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support for the proposals. He asked me a number of specific questions. Are we proposing that members of the general public be allowed into the courts? No—and to that extent, this regime is more restrictive than the one that applies in the youth courts. However, I think that that is appropriate, although we are open to representations, if necessary, on the issue. Will parents be able to discuss their cases with MPs? Yes, and in my experience they do already, although often in breach of some extraordinarily complicated and convoluted rules, which I discovered only very recently.
	One of the issues is about the identity of expert witnesses should be able to be made public. My default setting is that they should; I believe that in cases of this kind, the expertise of such witnesses should no more be allowed to go without scrutiny than the expertise of those in other cases, in which equally life-threatening or life-changing decisions are made and expert witnesses have to justify publicly their expertise and judgments.
	We are seeking to overturn the part of Clayton  v. Clayton that says that in principle the protection of the privacy of the child should fall away once the proceedings have finally been completed. We intend to reverse that, so that the presumption is the other way.
	There was a huge consultation on the increase in family court fees. Local authorities had a transfer of £40 million from the Ministry of Justice budget—and a little more, I may say—to meet the full costs of that transfer of fees. I would have preferred the transfer to have been ring-fenced to the local authorities so that they could use it only for these purposes. The local authorities are themselves root and branch opposed to ring-fencing—but they have had the money. It therefore does not lie in their mouth to complain that they cannot afford the fees: they can.
	Moreover, the fee is £4,000 on average; it ranges from £1,750 to £4,825, and the full fee applies only at the upper end. Local authorities have to base their decisions on the interests of the child. The fee, even at £4,000, is a very small proportion of the total costs of taking a case, which average £25,000. It is a still smaller proportion of the costs of taking a child into care, which are £40,000 on average and rise to £101,000 and more if the child is taken into secure accommodation for a year.

Edward Balls: The delivery of this summer's national curriculum tests for 11 and 14-year-olds was a shambles. I want to say to all the teachers, pupils, parents and markers who have been affected how sorry I am for all their inconvenience, stress and frustration. What happened this year was completely unacceptable. It was because I was determined to get to the bottom of exactly what went wrong and to ensure that it does not happen again that, in July, I asked Lord Sutherland to conduct an independent inquiry. I laid a copy of Lord Sutherland's final report before the House at 2.30 this afternoon, and I have already acted to ensure that all his recommendations will be implemented in full.
	In this statement, I will set out the Government's initial response, and the steps that we are taking to ensure that the 2009 test results will be successfully delivered on time. I am grateful to Lord Sutherland for his very thorough report, and in January I will publish a detailed response setting out how we are implementing all his recommendations in full.
	Lord Sutherland begins his report with these words:
	"At its heart, this summer's test delivery failure represented a failure in customer service—to...pupils, to their schools, and to the markers upon whom the National Curriculum testing regime relies."
	He finds that
	"failures occurred at almost every stage of the test delivery process".
	He also says:
	"The primary responsibility must therefore rest with the American"
	not-for-profit
	"organisation, ETS Global BV...which won the public contract to deliver the tests and failed its customers."
	In particular, Lord Sutherland finds that
	"ETS's project management was not fit-for-purpose...ETS failed to identify and assess risks accurately and failed to report risks to NAA transparently...There were cumulative failures in different components and interfaces of the ETS delivery system...ETS did not invest in its relationship with schools and markers, and its level of customer service was wholly unacceptable and lacked professionalism".
	That is why, on 15 August, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority dissolved ETS's contract. ETS forfeited a significant amount of future earnings and repaid £24.1 million to the taxpayer, which is two thirds of the money due to ETS for the first year of its then five-year contract.
	Lord Sutherland then says:
	"The events of this summer also represent a failure on the part of one of the Government's Non-Departmental Public Bodies, the QCA...to deliver its remit."
	His report
	"describes the procurement process that QCA used to select its delivery supplier, ETS, how it managed the contract, and why it should have realised sooner that the test results could well be seriously delayed."
	In particular, he finds:
	"QCA had project and risk management systems in place, but did not use these effectively to support and challenge ETS and inform decision-making".
	He finds that
	"The QCA Board had insufficient oversight of the management and risks associated with the delivery of its biggest contract".
	He finds that
	"neither NAA senior personnel, the QCA Executive, or QCA Board appear to have assessed the mounting risks appropriately",
	and that
	"the issues that arose during the test process should have alerted ETS, and in turn QCA, to the severity of the situation and the inevitability that test results would not be delivered on time."
	I have today written to the new chair of the QCA board, Mr. Christopher Trinick, asking him to implement all Lord Sutherland's recommendations relating to the QCA in full, and to provide me with a full report on progress by 16 January. In a statement this afternoon, the QCA board has announced that its chief executive, Dr. Ken Boston, and Mr. David Gee, the managing director of the National Assessment Agency, have both been suspended pending a full board inquiry into Lord Sutherland's findings. The QCA board has, with our agreement, appointed Mr. Andrew Hall, currently its director of strategic resource management, as interim chief executive while that inquiry takes place.
	Lord Sutherland's report also makes recommendations covering the procurement process; the role of Department for Children, Schools and Families officials and Ministers; the role of Ofqual; and the procurement and delivery of future tests. On the procurement of the contract with ETS by the QCA, Lord Sutherland concludes:
	"The procurement procedure was sound",
	but he also highlights the fact that, despite
	"sound checks on the financial strength and liquidity"
	of the supplier and two Office of Government Commerce gateway reviews, the procurement
	"failed to identify relevant information"
	regarding the supplier's "reputation and track record."
	Lord Sutherland finds that
	"In future, QCA should seek better information on the knowledge, capacity, experience, and track record of its preferred test operations supplier".
	Although this is not an explicit recommendation of Lord Sutherland's report, my permanent secretary David Bell has today written to Nigel Smith, chief executive of the Office of Government Commerce, asking him to consider whether there are wider lessons from Lord Sutherland's report for OGC gateway reviews. We will report on that in January as well.
	On my Department, Lord Sutherland finds that
	"DCSF had comprehensive mechanisms in place to monitor QCA's overall corporate performance and delivery against specific success measures".
	He also says:
	"In practice in 2008 what happened was that DCSF observers escalated their own assessment of risks to the DCSF ministers on a number of occasions. On this basis, ministers usually pressed the QCA Chief Executive for answers. At this point, because information was not being escalated within QCA effectively",
	the consequence was that
	"ministers were given strong reassurances, by QCA that all was on track. As late as 17 June when the Schools Minister met QCA's Chief Executive and NAA's Managing Director, they provided reassurances."
	Lord Sutherland also confirms in his report:
	"In practice, the first time QCA notified Ministers that ETS would not deliver test results on time was 30 June 2008"—
	four days before I announced that the tests would be delayed and Ofqual and I launched Lord Sutherland's independent inquiry. While Lord Sutherland concludes that
	"DCSF had good project and risk management processes and a pragmatic approach",
	he does say that
	"officials may not have challenged QCA sufficiently on its project and risk management of the tests".
	He also recommends:
	"The role of DCSF observers to meetings such as the operational, programme and corporate boards should be clarified on a case-by-case basis and those expectations articulated clearly".
	That is an important recommendation, and I will report in January on how we can further strengthen and clarify those governance arrangements.
	On regulation, Lord Sutherland
	"welcomes the creation of Ofqual as an independent regulator of National Curriculum tests as a positive development, and believes it represents a significant improvement on the previous arrangements".
	However, he identifies some weaknesses to be addressed and makes recommendations to strengthen and clarify the role of Ofqual. In her letter to me today, the chair of Ofqual, Kathleen Tattersall, confirms that she has also accepted those recommendations in full. We intend to legislate accordingly in the children, skills and learning Bill.
	On test delivery, Lord Sutherland makes recommendations on how procedures can be modernised and improved in future years. As I told the House in a statement on 16 October, with Lord Sutherland's advice, the QCA tendered for a single year contract for the delivery of the 2009 national tests. Last week, following the receipt of his report, I wrote to Lord Sutherland asking him to advise me on the QCA's handling of the procurement process, and I have published his reply to me this afternoon.
	In my statement to the House in October, I said that I agreed with the Select Committee that the principle of national testing is sound. I announced that we will not require pupils to take key stage 3 tests from 2009 onwards, but that externally marked key stage 2 national curriculum tests are essential to give parents, teachers and the public the information they need about the progress of each primary age child and of every primary school. I also said, however, that the current testing and assessment regime is not set in stone; that we will continue to look at the emerging evidence from our single level test pilots; and that I had asked our expert group to report in the spring.
	I know that there are some who do not agree with me about the importance of externally marked national tests, but even they will agree that where we have national tests, they should be delivered successfully and on time, as they have been in the past. That did not happen this year. As Lord Sutherland concludes:
	"It is undoubtedly the case that pupils were let down."
	I am determined to ensure that this does not happen again, which is why we will now implement all of Lord Sutherland's recommendations in full. I commend this statement to the House.

David Laws: I, too, thank the Secretary of State for giving me early sight both of his statement and Lord Sutherland's report.
	On page 30 of the report, which was issued today, Lord Sutherland quotes the chairman of the QCA back in December 2006 rather optimistically suggesting that this contract might eventually be seen as a case study in best practice. Sadly, what Lord Sutherland has reported seems to be a masterclass in incompetent project management, with ETS, the NAA, the QCA and perhaps Ministers to blame in varying degrees.
	First, I want to make it clear that I support the action that the Government have taken so far in removing the contract from ETS and in changing the management of the QCA and the NAA. Those actions are justified by the information provided by Lord Sutherland. However, I am not quite so clear that the Secretary of State's statement is satisfactory in relation to the role of his Department and Ministers. Indeed, his statement could be summed up as follows: "Everybody is to blame other than Ministers." Even officials in his Department get the blame, along with ETS, the QCA and the NAA.
	May I take the Secretary of State back to two points raised by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), which I fear he did not respond to? First, the Secretary of State quoted paragraph 4.137 on page 85 of the report. It suggests that what happened in 2008 was that his Department's observers escalated their own assessment of risks to Ministers on a number of occasions, and it goes on to say that
	"ministers usually pressed QCA's Chief Executive for answers."
	A moment ago, the Secretary of State seemed to indicate that "usually" means "always", but it does not. Therefore, after today's sitting, could he send the hon. Member for Surrey Heath and me a list of all the occasions when DCSF observers raised these issues with Ministers, and will he describe what the concerns were on each occasion and how Ministers decided to act, if at all?
	Will the Secretary of State also return to another point raised by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath? On page 37 of the report, Lord Sutherland quotes Ken Boston of the QCA, who wrote the following in evidence as recently as three weeks ago, on 27 November:
	"Throughout the process...ministers and officials had access to exactly the same data and information as the NAA and the QCA; they were active participants in the process; and...were...in no way at 'arm's length'."
	Is that not the clearest possible signal, given just three weeks ago, that the head of the QCA was anticipating that he and the NAA would be expected by Ministers to shoulder the full responsibility? He clearly does not believe that that should fall only to the QCA and the NAA. Did the Secretary of State request Ken Boston's resignation or was that offered by the chief executive of the QCA on an entirely voluntary basis? Let me make it clear to the Secretary of State that I am not suggesting that ETS, the NAA and the QCA do not have the primary burden of blame, because they clearly do. I am suggesting that it is also the case that Ministers appear to be asleep at the wheel and that they should accept some responsibility.
	May I raise three brief final points about the future of the key stage tests? First, we understand from one of the letters that the Secretary of State has issued today that he—or the QCA—will be releasing information today on the number of appeals against the 2008 test results and what proportion of them have been upheld. Why was that information not available to the House before this statement, and can he shed some light on that today? Secondly, does he accept that, given the short time scale before the key stage 2 tests in 2009, Ministers will need to accept direct oversight and responsibility for ensuring that those tests are delivered effectively? They will not be able to get away with distancing themselves in the way that they have done this year.
	Thirdly, and finally, may I ask the Secretary of State about the future of key stage 2 national tests? May I suggest that those should be retained and that he should not proceed with the single level tests? However, in the review that is under way, will he ensure that the opportunity is taken for a fundamental reappraisal of what is being tested and of the scope for improving and streamlining the tests and for using more internal assessment, complemented both by external assessment and external checks? If he manages this review effectively, it is still possible that we will salvage something from the shambles that Lord Sutherland describes so effectively today.

David Laws: No, it wasn't!

Edward Balls: Well, I advise the hon. Gentleman to read the Sutherland inquiry. It says, in terms and as I quoted in my statement, that in practice it was only on 30 June that Ministers were informed by QCA that there would be delays in the tests. There was a meeting on 17 June because my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools and Learners asked for a meeting with David Gee and Ken Boston because he was concerned about the advice that he had had from DCFS officials—not from LEAs or the QCA. My right hon. Friend asked for that meeting, in which Ken Boston deferred to David Gee who assured my right hon. Friend that things were on track. In retrospect, David Gee got that badly wrong, but it was our job to ask our delivery agent to deliver. We regularly asked questions and we were told that they were delivering. It is all substantiated in the report.
	The delivery failure was by the QCA and the NAA, and Lord Sutherland is very clear on that point. Ken Boston said in his evidence that the information that was being made available to him was also being made available to Ministers and our Department. The problem was—as the report makes clear—that he did not have a management system in place that meant that concerns in the NAA were escalated up to him. In fact, months earlier, NAA had a red risk rating and put scores of its own staff in to run the ETS contract, while telling Ken Boston that things were okay. But when he knew about the red risk ratings he did not act, and he assured us that things were okay. We did not have all the same information, but in any case it was his responsibility to act and he did not do so. That was the problem, and that is why the suspensions have occurred. That is why the inquiry was carried out, and that is why Sutherland says that while the primary responsibility was with ETS Europe, there was a failure on the part of the QCA to deliver.
	There was a fundamental failure of the QCA to deliver, but with a new chair, an interim chief executive, these recommendations from Lord Sutherland and this independent report, we can move forward. That is what we are determined to do.

Barry Sheerman: My right hon. Friend will know that the Children, Schools and Families Committee is undertaking an ongoing investigation into these matters, which also takes in the contract for education maintenance allowances. As part of that, we will take evidence from Ken Boston and Lord Sutherland in the new year.
	May I ask him just two questions today? First, we all understand the game of "Get the Secretary of State" that is being played between the parties, but does he regret—

Edward Balls: I am happy to put on the record my thanks to Ken Boston. I worked with him over the past year and a half and thought that he delivered the key stage 3 reforms, which have been widely welcomed in schools, extremely well. We never had a difficult word, but I regret, as does Ken Boston now, that when he gave me reassurances in face-to-face meetings that things were on track that turned out not to be the case. I am very sorry about what has happened today, but we are where we are and we have to move forward.
	I know that the Select Committee is doing its review and I will ensure that my more detailed response is provided to my hon. Friend so that we can give evidence to that Select Committee. I hope that by then the Opposition members of the Committee will have had a chance to study it, because that might mean that they will be rather more informed in their barracking in the Committee.
	I do not accept the point about the shadow authority, but I accept the point about too many cooks spoiling the broth. The NAA was a division of QCA, with no separate independent function. The QCA chief executive was responsible to the board for the delivery of tests, not the NAA, although the NAA was a member of the executive board. The QCA has today taken the step of removing the NAA label, which, I believe, got in the way. Sutherland makes it very clear that that label confused accountabilities and allowed Ken Boston to manage things at arm's length, which was not the right thing to do. My hon. Friend is right on that point.
	Sutherland makes it clear that it was a problem when the regulator was within the QCA and not a distinct organisation. The appointment of an independent regulator in the form of Ofqual represented a significant step forward, and Sutherland says that that has made things better. They will be better still when we finally have the necessary legislation on the statute book. We can do certain things now to implement Sutherland's recommendations, but there is no evidence in the report that the establishment of Ofqual in shadow form made things worse. In fact, the Sutherland report shows that it made things better over the past few months.

David Chaytor: Given the difficulties this year, particularly those about the number of opinions and the changes to the borderlining practice, is there any point in publishing the key stage 3 results on a school by school basis? Should we not now simply put key stage 3 to bed and forget about it? On key stage 2, does the Secretary of State accept that it is possible to support a policy of national testing without requiring every child in every school to sit a test every year in each of the key subjects at the same time? There are other forms of perfectly valid national testing that could be more effective and would certainly be cheaper. On the NAA, the Sutherland inquiry refers to the ambiguous relationship between the NAA and the QCA. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that there will be no ambiguity whatever in that relationship in the new legislation that will disaggregate the QCA?

Edward Balls: I can explain that to my hon. Friend. There was a body called the QCA. That single body was responsible for the procurement, management, delivery and regulation of tests and, clearly, it did not succeed. We have decided to have one organisation to procure, manage and deliver the tests, and a separate organisation independent of Government called Ofqual to regulate them.  [ Interruption. ] I thought that the Opposition supported the establishment of Ofqual, although the comments being made by Conservative Members suggests otherwise. However, it is right to split delivery and regulation, and that is what we are doing. Lord Sutherland makes it clear that, in his view, that approach will strengthen the regime and lead to more confidence for teachers, pupils and markers in the future.
	In this case, I believe that we are doing the right thing, although I agree that the proliferation of quangos is not always ideal.

Edward Balls: The position is clear: a school pays a financial penalty only if a review is unsuccessful. That is an important principle, as it means that it is not possible for there to be review after review. If there were no financial cost to a litigious review, everyone would appeal. We have had 200,000 reviews this year, compared to 50,000 in 2007, and it is estimated that a further, and final, 18,000 review outcomes will be issued to schools. The rise is partly due to concern about test marking, although in her letter to me today the head of Ofqual makes it clear that she retains the view that she expressed in July—that marking standards were maintained and that there was no decline in marking quality.
	The review process will continue and, as I have said, we decided some years ago to remove borderlining. Its abolition means that cases that in the old days would have been allowed a bit of an upgrade do not receive one now. That will have led to an increase in the number of reviews, but it is really important that the review process is undertaken properly and with integrity. A school that succeeds does not pay the fee, whereas one that fails does.

Estimates Day
	 — 
	[1st Allotted Day]

VOTE ON ACCOUNT, 2009-10
	 — 
	OFFICE OF GAS AND ELECTRICITY MARKETS

Peter Luff: This is the last occasion on which my Committee, the Business and Enterprise Committee, will initiate a debate on energy policy. We have produced our last report, so this is something of a nostalgic occasion, although it will be much briefer than I had hoped. I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Health. When there are so many Government statements on a day on which there are important matters to debate, injury time should be added to our proceedings, so that all those who want to participate can do so. It is very regrettable that we are down to less than two hours for each of today's two important debates.
	The Government were right to create a new Department of Energy and Climate Change given the importance of the issue of energy, but it is a policy area that members of my Committee and I will miss greatly. It is an endlessly fascinating policy area, with economics, domestic politics, science, geopolitics, social policy and many other considerations forming part of the mix. The policy needs to reconcile three often conflicting aims: security of supply, affordability and sustainability. For example, achieving sustainability often means subsidy and cost, and that is paid for by the consumer, which means higher prices. Security of supply means investment, and that means reasonable profits for the energy companies, which means that prices must move with markets—and with the imperfect wholesale markets, too.
	At the start of the year, the six main energy companies announced double-digit price hikes for their retail gas and electricity consumers. Not surprisingly, those steep increases were met with howls of protest from consumers, politicians and the media.  The Sunday Times even went as far as to say that the big six were operating a cartel. The firms told us that they were simply responding to rising wholesale prices. Understandably, the Chancellor and the Government wanted to appear responsive to consumers' concerns, so the Chancellor hauled the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets before him and demanded to know what was going on—perhaps surprisingly, as he had had responsibility for Ofgem only six months previously. Ofgem responded:
	"Britain's competitive market in energy is working."
	We did not believe the regulator. We called in the then Minister for Energy, the right hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks), who is in the Chamber—it is a pleasure to see him here—in order to understand what was happening. His evidence was eloquent and elegant, as always, but I have to say that we were not totally reassured, so we launched our own inquiry. It soon transpired that Ofgem did not believe its analysis of the markets either, as the regulator launched its own probe into the energy supply market little more than two weeks after we had done so. We do not believe that Ofgem would have launched its probe had we not forced its hand. At the very least, our inquiry ensured that the regulator did its job properly. Its initial findings are a very thorough job of work. Our work turned into one of the largest and most complex inquiries that the Committee has ever conducted, and this debate marks its culmination, as we hand over responsibility to the new Committee in the new year.
	This debate is primarily about our July report, "Energy prices, fuel poverty and Ofgem" but also tagged is our most recent—and last—report, published last Friday, called "Energy policy: future challenges". Together, the two reports represent our main views on those complex issues, and I hope that the new Committee will study them carefully. I believe them to be politically and economically well-founded and, for such a complex subject, to be pretty readable, too. I want to thank all the Committee staff who worked so hard to ensure that the documents were published rapidly and efficiently. I am blessed with a great team in my Committee office, and I am proud of them all.
	Let me turn to the subject of wholesale oil and gas markets. Any discussion of energy prices must begin with the price of oil. At the start of 2008, the markets heralded a price of $100 per barrel—an amount that would have been unthinkable five years ago. Not content with one high water mark, the markets continued to push prices up for the first half of the year. By the time my Committee published its July report, prices had reached almost $150, and some pundits were predicting that the price would be $200 or even $250 by about now. Such expectations now seem laughable. The energy price bubble has met the same end as most other asset price bubbles; it was pricked by the harsh reality of a sharp economic downturn. That is not to say that the oil price will not reach such heights again—it probably will, but not in the short to medium term.
	The important point is that the price of gas and electricity are inextricably linked to that of oil. That is because the UK is no longer self-sufficient in its supply of gas, and must instead depend increasingly on imports, particularly from Europe. On the continent, for largely historical reasons, gas prices are linked to oil prices. There is no economic rationale for that at all, and no one could really explain to us why it persists, other than that it seems rather to suit the interests of the oil and gas companies.
	Gas supply from the UK continental shelf is falling rapidly, and almost all the new electricity generating capacity due to come online in the short to medium term will use gas. That means, it seems, that the UK's dependency on gas imports is set to increase. That poses major challenges for the Government. We have a liberalised gas market in the UK, but it is structurally tied to an unliberalised European market. UK gas prices rarely fall below European levels because our companies simply choose to export surplus production. That is particularly the case in the summer, when gas consumption is lower. In the winter, UK prices have to rise significantly above European levels to attract that gas back. That is part of the reason why we have seen such large spikes in the price of gas during recent winters.
	A further big reason is that the European markets have not liberalised in the same way as we have. There is not much that we can do about that, try as we might. Heaven knows successive Energy Ministers have tried, and I am sure that they will continue to do so.

Peter Luff: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman—a distinguished member of my Committee—for that remark. As far as I am aware, that issue has not yet satisfactorily been addressed. It seems to be a breach of the simple single market rules of the European Union, and I cannot understand that. It is a matter of great concern to the Committee, and I hope that it will be to our successors, too.
	On gas supply, the Government must take some of the blame for the current predicament. If we were able to store gas at times when it is cheaper, the UK would not suffer from the current volatility in prices. Our growing dependency on gas and the need for more storage was a car crash that the Committee, and its predecessor, saw coming years ago, and I am afraid that the Government have been very slow to react to it. We have just 13 days of storage capacity. Germany has 99 and France has 122. Even if all the projects under construction or with the required consents were built, we would add only another five days of storage by 2014. In other words, we need growth of a greater magnitude than that achieved to date if we are to match the Europeans and protect our vital national interests. Planning has been a problem in that regard, as it has been for many aspects of energy infrastructure. We can only hope that the new infrastructure planning commission will help in that regard, although even if it does—there are some doubts about that—it will be some time before it begins to have an impact. The Government must move quickly to put in place a national policy statement on gas storage.
	Worryingly, planning is not the only important issue. The industry told us that the economic incentives for the market to build new storage simply did not exist until fairly recently. Those incentives have now been virtually wiped out by the collapse in energy prices, and by the reduced availability of financing resulting from the credit crunch. In simple terms, the market will not deliver. If new storage capacity is to be built on time, the Government must think again about the incentives that they can provide.
	Lack of gas storage is not the only problem with the wholesale gas markets. Companies have been investing in new infrastructure for liquefied natural gas imports to the UK. One of our main facilities is at the Isle of Grain. Its owners—BP and Sonatrach—have barely used it this year, choosing instead to send LNG to the far east, where economies are willing to pay more. Third parties have the right to use the facility, but none have done so this year. Ofgem has been dismissive of the possibility that the regulatory framework for gaining access might be a factor, despite several witnesses telling us that it is. We believe that Ofgem should look again at the issue. Otherwise, we will have concerns about the outlook for new LNG capacity at Milford Haven.
	Liquidity in the gas market is a major concern for the Committee. For those who want to buy gas to use right now, the UK has one of the most liquid gas markets in the world, but that is not the experience for manufacturers who want to hedge prices by buying ahead; they just cannot do that. The financial crisis has served only to reduce liquidity further. Ofgem and the Government—I hope that this will not be true of the new Department—do not seem to believe that that is a problem. The UK's manufacturing base has told us otherwise. When even an arm of government—the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency—is concerned that there is
	"no effective long term market"
	for gas, the Government and the regulator should take notice.
	What about wholesale electricity? Failings in the wholesale gas market feed through to the wholesale electricity market, because 40 per cent. of our electricity comes from gas, and it provides the marginal source of generation in the UK—it sets the price. Our Committee found serious failings in that market, too. In 2008, electricity prices have been driven up, not just by higher gas prices, but because of environmental costs. For example, Ofgem reckons that since the start of phase 2 of the European Union emissions trading scheme, £9 per megawatt-hour has been added to the price of electricity, despite the fact that generators receive 93 per cent. of their permits free of charge. The Government estimate that the resulting windfall is about £2 billion a year over the five years of phase 2.
	No one knows exactly what the energy companies are doing with their windfall gains, which are distributed very unevenly between energy companies and generators. At first, the energy companies denied that the windfall gains even existed, and to the extent that they did admit to them, companies claimed that the value of the windfall had been passed on through lower prices or greater investment—investment that we need. The Government have rightly taken a different view in clawing back some of that money to tackle fuel poverty—that was one of the recommendations in our July report—but we are disappointed that neither they nor Ofgem have conducted a fuller analysis of what those windfalls were or how they were distributed.
	When the Committee published its report, the big six controlled 55 per cent. of electricity output, with the rest shared among the independent generators. In recent months, further consolidation has been promised, with the purchase of British Energy by the French company, EDF, which will own nearly a quarter of the UK's electricity output, with the big six controlling nearly three quarters of that output. Our report pushed the regulatory bodies to ensure that that consolidation did not affect the competitiveness of the market adversely, and I hope that the European Commission will have something to say about that when it reports on the acquisition of British Energy.
	Consolidation, however, was not our only concern. Many witnesses hid the fact that their companies owned both wholesale and retail arms—there was no transparency on where their profits were made. If other firms—potential new entrants—cannot see where profit-making opportunities lie in the value chain, it is easy to see why they are reluctant to enter the market to compete with the existing players, which is why we welcome Ofgem's decision, following the Government's prompting in response to one of our recommendations, to require the vertically integrated companies fully to disaggregate their accounts. That is an important, and big, step forward.

Peter Luff: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point with which I agree. It is something about which British Gas is particularly aggrieved, because it sometimes gets more of the blame than other companies because its profits are more visible than those of its competitors.
	Sadly, that is not the only issue facing new entrants. We found that the electricity market suffers from a profound lack of liquidity—a problem exacerbated by the financial crisis—which contributes to price volatility and poor price transparency. It contributed, too, to the exit of two of the largest independent electricity suppliers outside the big six in recent months. We welcome Ofgem's tough line on this issue, announced in its probe findings, and we hope that our successor Committee will look at the issue in detail. As it stands, the market discourages new investment in generation by new entrants, which leaves us heavily dependent on the big six to deliver the conventional capacity that the UK needs to replace the nuclear and coal-fired power stations that are set to close in the coming years. We are fearful that the economic and financial crisis will lead to delays in that much-needed investment.
	That creates a serious risk, highlighted in our most recent report, that the UK could face an "energy crunch" in the coming years. As with gas storage, it is clear that the market could fail to make the necessary investments on time without intervention from the Government. Every month that we lose increases the risk of the lights going out, or of increased dependency on gas generation, or both. The Government have already said in their White Paper last year that security of supply is their top priority alongside reducing carbon emissions. They will now have to work very hard to ensure that those two objectives do not become mutually exclusive. For example, new coal-fired generation will be possible only if there is significant progress on carbon capture and storage, which requires a much greater level of investment from the Government. They must quickly make the relevant national policy statement on nuclear power, and learn from the recent Finnish experience of cost overruns and delays, if new nuclear is to play the role that they want in the future energy mix, and which I believe it is right to want.
	The retail markets receive most attention, and we uncovered many problems in the service provided to households and small businesses. I want to make it clear that neither we nor Ofgem found any evidence of the energy companies acting as a cartel, but they do not need to do so. Given that the market is dominated by just six players, it is easy for them to make informed judgements about one another's actions and position in the market. They do not need to collude because the market is broken. Ofgem has, rightly, always advocated the benefits of consumers switching to realise the benefits of the liberalised markets. About half of households have changed either their electricity or gas supplier since liberalisation. Most of them have done so to benefit from a dual fuel tariff or some other offer. However, 20 per cent. of households have never switched, and they are predominantly pensioners, people in social group E and those in rented accommodation—in other words, some of the most vulnerable people.
	Our inquiry and Ofgem's probe found that those consumers least likely or able to switch were most likely to be the victims of price-discriminatory practices by the energy companies. For example, suppliers charge their legacy customers—the ones who stay with them and do not switch—an average of 6 per cent. more for electricity than "out of area" customers. Suppliers earn much higher margins on electricity than on gas, thus disadvantaging 4.3 million households that are not on the gas main. Both standard credit and prepayment meter users are disproportionately overcharged compared with direct debit customers. I therefore welcome what Ofgem said today, but I want to highlight the issue and ram the point home: it is not just about prepayment meters—where standard credit terms operate, that is where the bulk of fuel poverty exists.

Peter Luff: That is a powerful point. I strongly suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) will make some observations about the Post Office card account when he speaks on behalf of the Opposition, and offer some proposals to deal with that issue. The hon. Member for Nottingham, South is absolutely right, but that is not the only concern, because we are concerned, too, about the number of people who switch on to higher tariffs. The evidence is that 20 to 32 per cent. of households move on to a higher tariff after switching, so it is a mess.
	On the specific issue of the fuel-poor and direct selling, recent evidence from Ofgem showed that 48 per cent. of gas customers and 42 per cent. of electricity customers who switched as a result of a direct sales approach—doorstep selling—failed to achieve a price reduction. Ofgem has proposed action, but we think that although direct selling plays a role in helping people switch, if it helps people switch wrongly, it is doing more harm than good and needs to be banned. We will look at that carefully.
	Incidentally, it is not just private individuals who are affected, but small and medium-sized enterprises. We heard compelling evidence of predatory pricing, delaying tactics to win back customers, and confusing contract cancellation requirements. We are glad that Ofgem is looking at the SME market as well, but it is sad that that has come too late for my constituency company, BizzEnergy, which has gone into receivership, and for Electricity4Business, which has been driven out of the market. The market is thus becoming less, not more, competitive.
	I would say a great deal more about fuel poverty, but time is against me and a number of colleagues wish to speak. Briefly, we believe that fuel poverty levels will reach 5.5 million. That figure is quite widely accepted. The Government will therefore fail to meet their target to eradicate fuel poverty for vulnerable households by 2010, unless there are sharp reductions in price in the future. In our reports, we asked for the Government to go back to the drawing board in their approach to fuel poverty.
	We asked for a mandatory definition of what constitutes a social tariff and who qualifies for it. We said that income-raising measures should be targeted more accurately at the fuel-poor, not only pensioners. Pensioners are not the only group in fuel poverty, just as prepayment meter customers are not. Disabled people and many other vulnerable groups are also in fuel poverty, and we need to take action to help those groups as well, particularly through levels of investment in the energy efficiency of our housing stock.
	We were very pleased to see the Government's £1 billion fuel poverty package, which we thought struck the right note. That will prove the most effective way of addressing fuel poverty in the long run. However, I repeat that we are very sorry that so little has been done to address of the needs of the fuel-poor other than pensioners.
	Finally, our work over the past year has shone light on many problems in the UK's energy markets—energy markets of which we all thought we could be rather proud. That light caught the market's regulator, Ofgem, unawares. We feel as a Committee that we have set the agenda for Ofgem on too many occasions—for example, the direct debit issue was not being considered, but as a result of our Committee's activities, it is being looked at now.
	Although we welcomed the regulator's recent probe of the energy supply market, and many of its proposals, we hope Ofgem will make a new year's resolution for 2009 and take time to reflect on how it fell so far behind the curve in 2008. Part of the solution may lie in its powers. We hope the Government will look to ensure that the regulator has all the tools it needs to police the sector effectively. There is an important recommendation in our most recent report in relation to market abuse powers, which we are sympathetic to Ofgem's claim to gain for itself.

Peter Luff: What the chief executive said to us is that
	"'the Enterprise Act or the Competition Act is quite often a very clumsy tool—using a sledgehammer to crack what may be a big or a small nut'".
	If we could give Ofgem more carefully defined and targeted market abuse powers, it could crack those small nuts, which are the often the problems that cause most grievance to our constituents, and understandably so.
	Such considerations as we have been debating need also to be placed within a wider debate on the effectiveness of the overall regulatory regime for energy. A plethora of bodies now exists. They include Consumer Direct, Consumer Focus, the energy ombudsman, the energy companies and Ofgem itself. I find such a framework confusing and I am trying to work my way through it. Members of the Committee find it confusing, and the witnesses who came before us said that they thought it probably would be confusing.
	I know that there have been changes recently that will take time to settle down, but one wonders how our average constituent is supposed to understand the system. After saying that I was referring the direct debit issue to Ofgem, I have been getting quite a lot of letters saying, "But Ofgem has been abolished." No, it is Energywatch that has been abolished. These constant changes are unhelpful, and the structure runs the risk of not properly informing the regulator about issues and problems in the market.
	The events of 2008 within the energy sector and the wider economic context have profound implications for the UK's future energy policy. Ofgem and the Government must now rethink whether the assumptions that they have made are the right ones. Is the market working as effectively as both claim? I do not think it is. Will that market deliver security of supply? It is far from certain that it will. Can that be achieved without sacrificing our carbon reduction ambitions? It must be, and I hope it will be.
	Are the renewable energy targets really achievable? I have yet to hear anyone who thinks they genuinely are achievable. They are good targets to work towards, but can we achieve them? I doubt it very much. A question that worries me a great deal is whether it is right to devolve important social policy questions about poverty to Ofgem and the energy companies. Are those not matters for Government to decide?
	On a specific point, I think smart meters are an important part of the answer to the direct debit question, to carbon dioxide reductions, and to informing consumers about what they are consuming. I note that the Government are in a two-year consultation period for a 10-year roll-out programme for smart meters. Italy did smart meters in three years, so I hope we can move a little more quickly on that subject. We could find mechanisms to enable us to do that. There might be some extra cost, but the benefits would be huge.
	These are many of the questions—not all of them—that the regulator, the Government and the new Energy and Climate Change Committee face, among others, in the coming years. I am sorry to kiss goodbye to these issues. They are vital ones, and the Committee and the Government have some very important questions to face.

Alan Whitehead: I join right hon. and hon. Members in paying tribute to the work of the Business and Enterprise Committee and its two recent reports, both for their content and for their quick and timely production. They address the current volatile issues in the market and the longer-term trends on which we should base our energy policy, rather than what is happening daily.
	Although oil peaked at $147 a barrel in July, it has apparently been in free fall ever since, with its current price at $40 to $45 a barrel. That underpins everything else connected with our energy supplies. We must track those curves to make sure that the energy companies charge consumers prices that relate to those and other changes, such as the fact that two nuclear power stations have been out of commission for a considerable time, which raises issues of confidence in our electricity supplies, and the changes in the value of the pound, which have implications for the importation of gas.
	It is important to keep those curves in sight when we discuss energy charges. Notwithstanding the cheaper energy prices that may be with us for a while, it remains fundamentally true that the era of cheap energy is firmly over. It is more than possible that when leading industrial companies come out of recession, the price of oil could rapidly rise very high indeed. We need to make structural changes to our medium and longer-term energy policies and supplies, rather than simply deal with shorter-term changes.
	Those considerations are relevant to the problem of fuel poverty. We are told that, because of the definition of fuel poverty as a percentage of income, 40,000 people go into fuel poverty for every 1 per cent. rise in electricity prices. Logically, 40,000 people come out of fuel poverty, according to that definition, if prices come down. If prices are in a slump, the Government might look as though they are reaching their target for the eradication of fuel poverty over, say, a six-month period, yet six months later they might look as though they are way off beam. The people involved, of course, do not have more money in their pockets to pay for fuel, and neither do they consume different quantities of it; they have simply moved around as a result of forces way beyond their and other people's control. We need to concentrate on structural changes to the relationship of fuel-poor people to the energy that they consume. That is the right way to combat fuel poverty in a high-cost energy economy.
	That will require measures to enable fuel-poor people to control their energy consumption more effectively, and the recent measures to equalise pre-payment meters are a pointer in that direction. The issue is not just that people with such meters are more likely to be in fuel poverty, although that is not exclusively the case, or that it is unfair that pre-payment meter users are charged excessive premiums, although my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (John Battle) is absolutely right to be concerned about how those meters have effectively been used as an additional charging device. The issue is also that if consumption is controlled, an additional expense for the fuel-poor is avoided.
	In defence of the direct debit payers, who are the yardstick by which pre-payment meters are measured, I might add that, as the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) emphasised, just as small imbalances in a roulette wheel system will always benefit the casino, small changes in direct debit payments appear systematically to end up putting money in the energy companies' banks. Even given the churn over time, direct debit consumers are probably systematically lending energy companies money. That does not appear to be right as far as long-term energy supplies are concerned, and I hope that Ofgem will take seriously an investigation into the matter. One of the roles of the successor Committee should be to make sure that the issue is pursued.

Alan Whitehead: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that suggestion. Putting social tariffs on a statutory basis and making sure that they are not simply a device to shift responsibility for underwriting them to different forms of customers is important. However, I emphasised earlier that our world has changed; I also think that simply saying that we can shift notions about how people pay for electricity is not a sufficient answer to fuel poverty or energy supply problems.
	I mentioned the problems of pre-payment meters and those who pay by direct debit. Both those issues could be resolved instantly by the introduction of smart meters. Smart meters give people control of their energy supply and mean that readings can be made regularly, rather than there being estimated bills. Pre-payment smart meters could be calibrated regularly and an accurate reading could be made of what is being paid. All that would make a big difference to how the energy is supplied and the consequences.
	I hope that the programme enabled by the Energy Act 2008 to roll out smart meters is substantially truncated. As far as meters are concerned, we are living in a medieval world. There are still what are virtually wind-up meters in many houses, and a lot of the time those who clamber in to read the meters do not do so accurately. A lot of people are living in a world of estimates and possibly of substantial overpayments, whatever their tariff.

Alan Whitehead: My hon. Friend makes an important point. There are a variety of problems with switching in terms of the extent to which evidence suggests that a number of impediments are put in the path of switching and the extent to which people have usable information about what switching means in terms of their future tariffs. However, that has to sit with the overall point that switching is not the answer in its own right, by any stretch of the imagination. Although it may be an important element of how the current market operates, it is ultimately a zero sum game as regards the imperative of reducing the total amount of energy going round the system.
	One small structural change that we might pursue is to consider the methods whereby we delivery insulation and renewable, sustainable devices into the domestic environment and into small and medium-sized enterprises. The Treasury rules about what one can and cannot lease could be changed very slightly to make it possible to align the leasing arrangements in SMEs or the ability of energy companies to supply renewable products and insulation to homes. That would enable devices to be leased rather than purchased and therefore enable those leases to be paid for by the savings that people make in the energy supply that the devices then supply to their homes and buildings. At the moment, the Treasury rules say, "If you can wheel it out of the door you can lease it; if you can't, you can't." Even if it can be unbolted from the wall and moved away, it cannot be leased. A change in leasing arrangements, like other aspects we have discussed—smart meters, switching and other devices that do not look fundamentally significant in their own right—could make a substantial difference to how people manage their energy supplies and how energy companies deliver those devices and services to people. Over the next decade, we should try to achieve the aim of a low-carbon energy economy that nevertheless supplies energy at an affordable price.

Steve Webb: Absolutely. As the Chairman of the Select Committee said, there is a litany of things on which the Committee has had to prompt Ofgem to do its job properly. That is totally unacceptable.
	Ofgem identified three ways in which the companies were exploiting their market dominance. The first is through pre-payment meter premiums. I take the point that there has been some progress, but we have still not eliminated excessive penalties on pre-payment meters. I also take the Chairman of the Committee's point that there is no straight corollary between pre-payment meter usage and fuel poverty. We need to ensure that the fuel poor in particular are not being overcharged for their energy. The second way relates to people who are off the gas main and who cannot access dual-fuel benefits. Some action there is necessary; indeed, it is good to see some.
	The third way in which the companies exploiting their market dominance, on which I have seen no evidence of progress, is through local monopolies. It has been put to me that companies such as—I do not mean to single this company out specifically—London Electricity, which became EDF, make all their profits from their legacy customers; that is, from inertia and from the people who have not swapped to an out-of-area supplier. That is a classic example of a market not working. Where a company has a huge base of inherited customers, many of whom would be better off switching, but who have stuck it out because they do not know how to switch, cannot be bothered to switch or whatever, that company can cream off millions. Ofgem says that there is a problem, but does not seem to be changing much. We need to give a kick—with a hobnailed boot, I suppose—up the backside of Ofgem, so that it really gets serious with the companies.
	The House would not expect me to reserve all my criticisms for Ofgem and the Minister would be disappointed if I did not direct some at the Government, so I will balance things up. Ofgem and the Government are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, because they both say exactly the same thing: "If you don't behave, we'll get tough." I have noticed that when I threaten my children with discipline but then fail to deliver it, they continue to misbehave. If the Minister thinks of himself as a slightly grumpy parent, I hope that he will realise that when he threatens discipline but does not deliver it, the children will go on misbehaving. My children have learnt—such behaviour is called learnt behaviour—and I am afraid that the energy companies have also continued to behave as they do. They have been told that they are in the last chance saloon, but they have been ordering extra rounds over and over again.
	Somebody has to draw a line. Somebody—I do not much care whether it is the Government, Ofgem or both—has to tell the energy companies. The fuel poor and our constituents more broadly are fed up with people threatening to get tough. That has gone on long enough. The fuel companies have been given enough rope to hang themselves and that is what they have done. Now someone has to pull it a bit tighter. Of course they have a right to trade and make a profit. Indeed, we need them to make a profit to invest. I understand all those things. However, the energy companies are not making a profit through economic efficiency in a dynamic market; they are exploiting a quasi-monopoly, and the most vulnerable people in our society are losing out as a result. That has gone on for too long; it has to stop.

Michael Weir: The evidence session that the Committee heard when we were preparing this report was among the most interesting that I have been involved in, covering a huge number of issues, from the markets and the impact on industry to fuel poverty. The Chairman, the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), gave the House are very good resumé of those issues, so I will not dwell on them further. I agree with everything that he said, apart from his enthusiasm for nuclear power, which I do not share. In the time available to me, I would like to comment on a few of the recommendations in the report.
	Clearly, the most pressing issues for households up and down the country are the price of energy and fuel poverty. The complex nature of this problem is reflected in the number of recommendations on those subjects. Some of those recommendations have already produced action, and I am now going to break the habit of a lifetime by saying something almost nice about Ofgem. Its action was prompted by the Committee's inquiry, and I share the Chairman's reservations about its needing to be prompted in that way. None the less, the report has produced some welcome changes, even if they are somewhat overdue.
	However, I would urge the Government, Ofgem and, indeed, the companies to go much further, particularly in relation to prepayment meters. I agree with what many others have said about the difficulties that they present. Under the current proposals, there would still be an opportunity for companies to charge more for such meters, due to what they call opportunity costs—namely, the fact that the meters cost more to service. There might be something in that, but I do not believe that we should accept that argument in respect of people who are on such meters because they are fuel poor. I deliberately make that point because not everybody who is on a prepayment meter is actually fuel poor. We should bear that in mind.
	For the fuel poor, prepayment meters are an example of people being penalised for paying in advance in cash. They are often used when people are in arrears and they bring with them the serious worry—for me, at least—that people will simply self-disconnect when they cannot afford the tokens to feed the meter. We collected data on disconnections relating to other methods of payment to the energy companies, but there are no reliable data on the number of people who simply self-disconnect by not feeding their meter. That can present as many problems as there are for people who are disconnected for other reasons, and they might be disconnected for quite long periods of time because they are unable to afford to feed their meter. That risk needs to be tackled, because if we do not know that it is happening, we cannot take action to help people in that position.

Mike O'Brien: I join the general congratulation of the Select Committee on its report. The report that it published over the summer was a professional and impressive piece of work, and I said so when I met the Committee. The latest report on future challenges involves a little bit of crystal-ball gazing, and when gazing into the future it seems to see things a little darkly, but a lot of challenges need to be met, and the Government are determined to meet them.
	I can hardly think of any justification for the claim of Government complacency made by the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry). We have just enacted the biggest legislative programme on energy that has ever been carried through by this Parliament. The Energy Act, the Climate Change Act and the Planning Act are a major set of policy initiatives that the Government have undertaken to meet some of the key challenges. The formation of a Department of Energy and Climate Change shows that the Government treat seriously the key challenges of energy sustainability, security of supply and the ensuring of affordability. The Government aim to cut emissions, hit our climate change targets, defend consumers and ensure diversity of supply of energy.
	I welcome the breadth of the debate. A number of serious points were made by hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) gave an excellent analysis of fuel poverty issues and my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire (Nick Ainger), with his knowledge of the oil industry, made interesting points about the commodity market. My right hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), with his knowledge of intensive energy users, made some important points, as have other Members, and I hope to deal with some of them.
	We need to deal with the key issue of affordability. Consumers must be able to get the energy they need at the lowest sustainable prices possible. Beyond that, they need to be confident that the prices that they pay are fair, and they are not at the moment. Healthy competition and fairness should be the hallmark of our independently regulated energy markets, and if there is any suggestion that consumers are being ripped off, we should not hesitate to take action by rooting out unfair practices. The Government want to ensure that that happens.

Mike O'Brien: The Government want to ensure that people pay fair prices. As my hon. Friend knows, the energy companies buy much of their gas, the price of which feeds into electricity prices, on the forward market. The energy chief executives tell us that that operates about six months ahead, so the prices that we are paying this winter tend to be based on the ones that they paid a few months ago. Changes, therefore, take time to feed through. That is a problem for us, but when he asks whether we are determined to do everything we can to ensure that we get energy prices down to a fair level, the straight answer is yes, we will.
	We will ensure, too, that Ofgem does everything it can. This has been a hard year for householders and businesses, with price rises and dramatic fluctuations in energy costs. Earlier in 2008, there were dramatic price rises in oil, gas and electricity, and more recently, some of the wholesale prices have fallen, and oil prices have fallen from $147 a barrel to about $40 a barrel—it varies. Petrol and diesel prices have now fallen below £1 a litre in most places. This Friday in London, energy Ministers will meet to discuss the oil market and how to stabilise prices and improve transparency, and I was fascinated to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire had to say. He raised some interesting points about the commodity market, and I would like to look at those in more detail.
	I mentioned prices falling, but that cannot be said yet about electricity and gas retail prices. Wholesale prices have fallen, but as I said, it is the forward price that is important. That is starting to go down, and I have met the chief executives and most of the main energy companies in the last week and clearly told them that we want them to bring down prices as soon as possible. They were able to give notice of price rises, and we want some notice of when they are going to bring down prices. We want a greater degree of transparency in the wholesale market because it feeds into the retail market. The pre-Budget report asks Ofgem to provide quarterly reports showing the relationship between wholesale, hedged-wholesale and average retail prices. That will make it clearer whether companies are passing on the benefits of downward price changes or not. It is important that falling wholesale prices are passed on to retail customers, particularly when they are under so many financial pressures.

Mike O'Brien: If my hon. Friend speaks to chief executives, he will find that different ones give very different messages. Some of them favour a statutory or agreed basis for the licensed system of social tariffs, and others do not. Some of the energy companies did not have a social tariff, such as Scottish Power last year. The energy companies adopt different policies. I am anxious to ensure that we bring about a more sensible regime on social tariffs, because at the moment it is difficult for those on low incomes to work out who is the best person to go to. People claim to have large discounts, but as the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) rightly said, some of those with the apparently biggest social tariffs charge the biggest prices. The deduction comes out of such prices and people end up paying more. It is a very complex matter. We have to ensure, however, that the energy companies are not making false profits and that they are not ripping off the consumer, and we intend to do so.
	Ofgem has received a lot of criticism, and I understand that this House holds a critical view of Ofgem, and I think that Ofgem now understands that. If it had not before, it will as a result of the debate. I understand it, and I want to ensure that confidence in Ofgem is resumed. It has recently announced that it wants to eradicate unreasonable premiums, and that it will change some of the licensing rules to prevent such premiums from recurring. It has given companies until February to respond on licence changes, and to implement some of the changes in full. It tells us that there have already been £300 million of reductions in prices for consumers, and that a further £200 million need to be made by February.
	Ministers have met the main energy companies' CEOs and emphasised our determination to legislate unless they show that they have acted to end discrimination against pre-payment meter payers and standard payment customers, as well as to deal with some of the other anomalies that have crept into their pricing programme.
	Legislation does not happen overnight in this place, but we are preparing to legislate should we need to do so. A referral to the Competition Commission, as suggested by the Conservatives, is an option, but it would involve a lengthy wait. CC reports can take 12 months to two years, so that would not help customers by February. It is a slow-lane response and it is not a sensible approach at present. Let us see if we can get this done; let us see if we can get some action from the energy companies and make sure that Ofgem keeps the pressure on them—with the hobnailed boots that Alistair Buchanan talked about on the radio this morning. We want to get this done without referring the matter to the CC, which may take two years. Ofgem has clearly said that it wants all these changes to be in place by February and we want that, too. Ofgem wants to get these reasonable results by February, but it also wants to sort out some of the licensing conditions and I want to be very clear on this: we will legislate if Ofgem does not get the changes it needs through.
	I am today placing in the House of Commons Library a comparative annual bill for each of the six energy companies based on a departmental analysis of the premiums they are charging for different kinds of payment based around the comparator of dual use payments. For example, for average annual usage of electricity and gas, the highest annual dual use bill is £1,240 from British Gas and the lowest appears to be EDF Energy at £1,168. On premiums paid for prepayment meters, British Gas came out the highest again at £158 and EDF was again the lowest at £78.80. On premiums above the cost for dual use on direct debit, customers paying by standard credit—those whom some people, including the Select Committee Chairman, the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), have indicated are a major issue—are likely to be paying more by between £109 with Scottish Power and £27 with E.ON. These are significant premiums and I want to be sure that they are justifiable. At present I am not entirely sure that they are; Ofgem seems to some extent to be sure, but I want to be sure that we are also happy with the figures.
	There are different ways of cutting these figures, and as there is competition they change regularly. When Members look at them, they will be comparing prices as of this week, and in many cases the sums are lower than they were some weeks ago when premiums were higher. However, although some of the companies have changed their prices in the past few weeks, Ofgem is still looking at them to ascertain if they are justifiable. The main justification for the expense of prepayment meters has been that they must be checked regularly. That was certainly true in the past when they were mostly coin meters, but nowadays they are often prepayment cards and the customer pays in advance, which brings a benefit to the company. Although Ofgem seems to some extent to be content with this, I am not convinced. Having seen today's Ofgem announcement, I want to drill down further into the justification for such a premium, which often falls on low-income people, and I have asked officials in the Department and Ofgem to look at this as a matter of urgency.
	I am conscious of the time, but I have not had an opportunity to deal with some of the key issues raised. We want to ensure that direct debit payments are looked at properly. I have some concerns and I have raised them with the chairman of each of the companies I have met. I have said I want them to justify some of the changes.
	In terms of our keeping the lights on, there is another energy gap—that which is in Opposition policy. I will not go into that now; we can leave for another day discussion of their failure to support the renewables obligation, and their opposition to coal-fired power stations, planning legislation and a number of international initiatives. Before they start criticising us for an energy gap, let me say that as far as we are concerned there are 10 GW of consents in process and 7.5 GW in planning. Even if the energy crunch does create some delays—we are looking at this with concern and I say to the Select Committee Chairman that since I gave evidence we have had some indications from some chairmen that a tightness is now developing in the market—we believe that there will continue to be investment. We are getting reassurances from the chairmen on that, too.
	On gas storage, the National Grid has as of yesterday updated its figures; its 2008 report indicates there is likely to be substantial new storage. I can go through some of the figures, but I am conscious of the time: 4.4 billion cu m existing; 1 billion cu m in construction; 3.3 billion cu m with planning consent; 1 billion cu m awaiting planning consent; and 12 billion cu m proposed, but planning not yet applied for. We therefore have quite a lot of interest in developing our gas storage.
	I would want to test some of the points raised by the Opposition spokesman if I had the time. The Government are committed to dealing with fuel poverty, to ensuring we keep the lights on, and to ensuring we have sufficient capacity to do so. The Government have every intention of delivering on that.
	 Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54(4)).

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I say to both hon. Gentlemen that I have no knowledge of the matter they have raised. Clearly, this is an important issue and the House will want to study the statement. Both hon. Gentlemen can make their inquiries in the usual way, and their points of order are clearly on the record. Front Benchers of both main parties are present, so I trust the usual channels will take note of what they say.

Michael Penning: The professional bodies can defend themselves, but one of the reasons for that response is that they felt that the decision was imposed on them. It was not piloted, and the evidence from the previous pilots were ignored. If it had not been imposed on them, they might have stayed around the table to discuss a better contract, but it was imposed without their agreement.

Norman Lamb: I hear the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen), say that that is true and she repeated the mantra at Health questions today, when she said that access was improving. However, all the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction. I fail to understand how she can continue to assert that access is improving.
	I want briefly to highlight some of the failings of the contract that the Health Committee identified, and to refer to the principles that should be applied when we review how the contract works and come up with a better way forward. First, as was highlighted by the Select Committee, the contract was imposed without being trialled. Rather like the Medical Training Application Service—the basis for recruiting junior doctors to specialties—the contracts were imposed by the Government. The right hon. Member for Rother Valley was absolutely right to suggest that we need engagement and ownership by the professionals if we are to ensure that reforms to our health system work to the greatest effect. Without ownership—and that is what happens if we impose a system—the system is unlikely to work effectively.
	Access, despite what the Minister continues to say, is worse: 1 million fewer adults and 200,000 fewer children have had access to NHS dentistry since the reforms came into effect in April 2006. Before the reforms, the Government claimed that 2 million patients wanted access to NHS dentistry, but they could not get it. On the assumption that those 2 million remain, together with an extra 1.2 million people, there are now well over 3 million people, on the Government's own figures, who want access to NHS dentistry but who are not getting it. As the previous Prime Minister said, the purpose of the new contract was to provide "access for all" who wanted it to NHS dentistry, but it was also to get dentists off the treadmill. The right hon. Member for Rother Valley was absolutely right: the previous contract was not a success, either.
	We heard an intervention from the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins), in which she made a fair point, and I am certainly not arguing for a return to a better yesterday—the old contract failed miserably in many respects. The new contract, however, continues the failure on access.

Norman Lamb: I absolutely agree. The failure to pilot schemes or to learn the lessons from pilots that have taken place is desperately frustrating. A system that was introduced without being trialled, in a big-bang approach across the country, was destined to fail. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the Government should have learned the lessons from those encouraging pilots, which were completely ignored.
	The Government's second assertion when the new contract was introduced was that it would get dentists off the treadmill. However, it appears to have reinforced the treadmill that many dentists believe they are on. We have heard that there is a disincentive to do complex work leading, dentists have told me, to a loss of skills. If they do not do that complex work, they become less skilled, which is worrying. There has been a 45 per cent. fall in root-canal work since 2004 and, to confirm the point that I made in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Rother Valley, the number of extractions has risen in the same period.

Norman Lamb: That may well be the case, but there is no doubt at all—and I think that the Health Committee report confirms this—that the new contract provides a disincentive to do that work, and the trend has continued with a vengeance since its introduction. In its conclusions, the Select Committee highlighted its concerns, particularly with regard to the loss of complex work, about the quality of dental care that patients who rely on the NHS receive.
	There is a related problem: if someone is referred by their usual dentist—in the past, that work would have been done by that dentist—they have to wait again, perhaps in considerable pain. The Select Committee recognised that that was an unsatisfactory situation and that, more often than not, it is appropriate for the work to be done by someone's own dentist. The point has been made repeatedly, both in the debate and beforehand, that there is no proper incentive for dentists to do preventive work, and the system does not emphasise quality. As I pointed out in an intervention, it is massively unpopular with dentists.
	UDAs are a sort of straitjacket that has been imposed on the profession. There is a great deal of evidence of dentists running out of UDAs before the end of the year, so they are left with no paid work to do under the NHS. If ever there was an incentive for someone to leave a system that imposes such a straitjacket, surely that is it. Even worse, dentists who do not reach their UDA target, perhaps because it has been calculated incorrectly, end up having to repay money that has already been paid to them. I have a dedicated NHS dentist in my area who gave up in disgust after he was required to repay a substantial sum because he had not met his target.
	There is clear evidence of a shortage of orthodontic work, leading to long delays in many parts of the country. A further problem is poor quality commissioning. There is accumulating evidence that primary care trusts are not taking advantage of the powers that they have and using those powers to good effect. By not carrying out dental health needs assessments for their areas, they are commissioning not on the basis of need, but on the basis of where dentists happen, by historical accident, to be. In Norfolk dentists have been allocated additional UDAs for the rest of the financial year, but they are reluctant to invest in new facilities and in bringing in extra dentists if they have no guarantee that that will continue, so the UDAs go unused.
	There is, however, some evidence of good quality commissioning taking place in some parts of the country. I refer in particular to the Heart of Birmingham PCT. I heard an extremely interesting presentation from Ros Hamburger, the public dental health specialist there. In that primary care trust, the contract has been manipulated to reduce reliance on the UDA for the payment of dentists. Instead, payments are based on quality thresholds and preventive work, adjusting the contract in a constructive and positive way. Time will tell whether it works and whether that lesson can be learned elsewhere, but it is right to point to the fact that good things are going on in some parts of the country.
	Concern has been expressed about the allocation of funding around the country and the importance of moving to a needs-based system for the allocation of funds. Many dentists are expected to leave in 2009. That is the expectation in the profession, and I suspect that that fear is driving the Government to get on with the review announced last week.
	All that leads me to ask whether that rather Soviet-style commissioning of care, rationed from the centre by an unelected quango, can ever work effectively. It clearly turns dentists off. Too often, they are left frustrated. The Minister shakes her head, but if she talks to dentists, she will find that that is what they say. They are left frustrated by slow, inefficient responses from the primary care trust. As we know, the PCTs have failed to identify where the need is and to allocate UDAs accordingly. The system is not working and the temptation for dentists all too often, not just because of the money, is to escape to a simpler life where they are their own bosses and where they do not have to deal with such a bureaucratic system.
	As the Select Committee also recognised, there is a need for fundamental reform—the Chairman referred to it as a fundamental or comprehensive review—of how the system operates.

Sandra Gidley: I am interested that the hon. Lady mentioned fluoridation. Is she aware that most of the evidence that shows that there is a case for fluoride relates to its use in a topical sense, and that the evidence base for adding fluoride to the water supply is very limited? Some countries have actually removed fluoride from the water. I think that her enthusiasm is slightly misplaced, because the improvements in dental health in areas where fluoride has been added to the water have not been as great as had been expected.

Paul Beresford: I am going to try to rush through my speech, and to add to, rather than repeat, the points that have already been made. In his introduction, the Chairman of the Committee said that there were three drivers or criteria in the original contract and that, from the point of view of the dental patient and of the profession, it had certainly failed. We do not have a more preventive approach now, dentists are on a treadmill as they have never been before, and there has been a transformation, in that many dentists have moved out and many thousands more wish to do so. We really need to find a system that will encourage many of those dentists who have gone totally private to come back, at least in part. The difficulty with that, of course, is the treadmill I mentioned and the avalanche hanging over every dentist with UDAs—units of dental activity—and the UDA contract.
	The difficulties of the UDA system—for example, the issue of whether to do root canal treatments or extractions—have already been touched on. A root canal on a molar tooth will take about 90 minutes, if the dentist is practised at it and if they use very expensive nickel-titanium reamers, which must be thrown away. In contrast, an extraction generally takes 15 minutes and the forceps are retained, which provides quite an incentive to the dentist, sadly.
	What really worries me is that according to NHS information centres, in excess of 1.2 million people are no longer able to access the national health service. That applies to about a million adults and, even more appallingly, about 200,000 children. That has got to be overcome. The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) mentioned that it is anticipated that many dentists will leave next year. The only benefit of the credit crunch that I can see is that they might be tempted to stay.
	Let me move on to two other issues: the development of dentistry and the patient, who has not really been mentioned so far. Over the last 10 or perhaps 12 years, there have been dramatic changes in dentistry, mostly positive and with most gains predominantly experienced in the western world, by which I mean the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Europe and to some degree in the UK, but outside the national health service.
	Mention was made of fluoridation, and I would like to re-emphasise the point made by the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins) and to contradict the intervention from the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley). Fluoridation is heavy in many of the countries I mentioned. It has made a huge improvement to the diminution of dental decay and without the detrimental health side-effects that were predicted by a few and were proclaimed by scaremongering detractors. Let me take a few moments to explain more fully.
	When I was a kid in New Zealand, dental schools provided dental nurses to work in state schools—New Zealand's schools are almost entirely state schools—and there were three dental schools. With fluoride in 60, 70 or 80 per cent. of the country's water supplies, those dental schools have been diminished to one. There are more schools, more children and more teeth, but there is less work. Instead of having three dental schools, as I said, New Zealand now has one, and the girls who come out of it who go to treat the children spend 50 per cent. of their time teaching prevention and 50 per cent. on actual treatment. Only a sixth of the number of children need treatment now, yet the effect of fluoride in the water supply has a lesser effect on children than on adults.
	Let me come back to the changes in dentistry. Progress on dental materials and techniques has been dramatic. Dentistry provides very successful implants, new composite fillings, new all-porcelain crowns, porcelain inlays, protective porcelain inlays/overlays and new materials for dentures, many of which can be and often are retained and stabilised by implants. There are beautiful, natural-looking veneers, protective overlay veneers, successful dental bleaching methods, dramatic new orthodontic techniques producing quite superb results and improved oral surgery techniques. Protection against cancer is also better if patients go to the dentist.
	We need to recognise that dentists are taught all those techniques in dental schools, but they are not available on the national health. I do not think that they should all be available on the national health. NHS dentistry should be driven predominantly as a health service for oral conditions. I am sorry to disagree somewhat with the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands, but although cosmetics are vital, the NHS should have no role in paying for them, except in exceptional circumstances, which do arise. A young girl who comes in with stained upper and lower anterior teeth should have bleaching available to her on the national health service. As the system works now, however, she will get six or 12 veneers where the teeth are stripped down via a high-speed burr and damaged for ever. The bleaching, however, would leave her with her natural teeth and make a dramatic change. We need to think about that.
	One negative, which I touched on during Question Time earlier and which the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands also mentioned, is oral cancer. It is distressing to see that the incidence of oral cancer has got much worse. There are more deaths, and the cure and detection rates are diminishing. A large degree of that relates to the fact that patients are no longer being seen.
	The chief dental officer was reported in the press as claiming that dentists were milking the system by asking patients to return for annual examinations. I hope that that is wrong, because the prevalence of oral cancer, particularly in deprived areas, means that it is vital that patients are seen and checked for that cancer regularly. I am referring to young people as well as those whom we normally expect to get cancer as they get on. Another point needs to be made: if a decayed molar, for example, needs to be restored, it can be restored by amalgam, composite, gold, porcelain bonded to gold or porcelain bonded to porcelain, but whatever is used, that is one less decayed tooth among the national population.
	We need to work to a system that introduces the private sector working alongside the NHS. I am a great supporter of NHS dentistry. I spent a lot of my career, in the early days, working in east London. We need NHS dentistry, but we need the dentists to be there for it. Taking away the drive to force them out, which the UDA targets system has introduced, might give us the chance to persuade some of those dentists to come back.
	I have a few more points to make. I hope that the Minister will think carefully when she looks at the new review. I shall cut out most of what I wanted to say and put a few basic points to her. We need to move on fluoridation. I have touched on that. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, a number of European countries and most of the states of the United States have dramatically better dental health than the UK, and that is entirely down to fluoride.
	May I suggest to the Minister that she needs to recognise a few basics? Patients need choice and they need that choice presented to them by well-trained dentists. The dentists need the appropriate equipment and materials. They need the time to produce quality work, including prevention, which the UDA targets system does not allow them. The measure of success should be the number of dentists prepared to offer core dental health treatment on the national health, not necessarily the number of people using the NHS, because that choice must be the patient's choice.

Michael Penning: It has been a short, but excellent debate, and I apologise to hon. Members who have not had the time that they deserved— perhaps having three statements at the start of the day did not help. I know that the Chairman of the Select Committee raised that during a point of order earlier.
	I shall try to touch on some of the points raised by hon. Members this evening, starting with the Chairman of the Select Committee. I was a very proud member of the Select Committee, and we heard earlier that there were calls for an inquiry into dentistry some time ago. I agree that there were such calls, and I praise Committee members for calling for that. I also praise the Committee for the quality of the recent report, which was very fair. It is scathing in places, but it also offers forward-thinking and innovative ideas on how the contract could be progressed. I do not agree with parts of the report, however, and Her Majesty's Opposition also have some ideas on how we could make progress, to which I will return shortly.
	I was interested to hear the Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), refer to his dentist earlier, because unless he is having treatment at the moment, he has not got a dentist as this contract does not involve registration. Therefore, unless someone is undergoing treatment, they do not have a dentist. I would have liked that to be made clear in the report; I do not think it is generally known by the public, but it is a fundamental point of the contract, which was imposed on dentists in 2006, that people are not registered unless they are actually having treatment. That is a very important issue, because if we were to go out on to the high streets of this country and ask members of the public who rely on NHS dentistry whether or not they are registered with a dentist, the vast majority would still say they were even though they are not. They might turn up at the dentist and say, "I need treatment", but that dentist might have already run out of UDAs; that dentist might already have said, "I can't treat any more patients this year." Those are the circumstances when some of the problems are occurring.

Michael Penning: I completely agree with my hon. Friend and I will come on to that point later. I do not see how we can have preventive dentistry without having some form of capitation and registration. I think the right hon. Member for Rother Valley alluded to that in his speech.
	The report digs deeply into what NHS dentistry is capable of doing in this country today. Should we actually give up on parts of the country that rely on NHS dentistry? There is a postcode lottery; it is a fact that in some parts of the country that I have visited there is a plethora of NHS dentistry. In Newcastle and the north-east there is almost no private dentistry, whereas in other parts of this country—I am referring to England now—there is almost no NHS dentistry. This is a national health service, however, and that is partly—although not completely—why this contract was created. It was already in difficulties before, which is why the Government, in good faith, tried to bring in a contract that would help, but instead it has made the situation worse.
	When the Select Committee took its evidence, about 900,000 people who had had NHS dentistry had lost it. The latest figure is 1.2 million. That means there are now 3 million people in this country who need to rely on NHS dentistry but who cannot access it. As the economic climate becomes increasingly difficult, more people will need to rely on NHS dentistry. I listened carefully to the comments of the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) when he said he is in Denplan. A lot of people who are in Denplan will not be able to continue to afford to make those monthly payments should they lose or change their job. The demands on NHS dentistry will, therefore, increase.
	We must look at what the Government might propose in the review. My personal view is that this contract is a damaged brand, with its language of UDAs. From meeting dentists around the country, it is clear that they are not confident that the contract can provide for the British people the sort of dentistry we expect in the 21st century. I therefore look forward to the review with a degree of scepticism in terms of where the contract can go.

Michael Penning: No, it does not. In fact, it resembles something similar to what happened when this contract was imposed in 2006.
	Lots of hon. Members have discussed the importance of proper continuity and discussion with the professionals in the dentistry profession. As has been mentioned, no one body represents the whole of dentistry and the dentistry profession—perhaps it would be better for the dentists if they did have one body that could stand up and fight their corner. I am very concerned that there appears to be a lack of engagement between Ministers and the professionals.
	I did not intend to upset the Minister at Health questions earlier today, but I clearly did so. Let me therefore go back for a second to where we were. I asked why no Minister went to the British Dental Association conference in Manchester this year to speak on behalf of the Government, given that the contract is so controversial within the profession. The Liberal Democrats spokesman was there, I was there and so, too, was the chief dental officer. He is a civil servant—he is not a Minister of the Crown and he is not elected; he is appointed by the Secretary of State for Health—and it is fundamentally unfair that a civil servant is there to represent the mistakes and problems that the Government have got themselves into on dentistry. Both the Liberal Democrats spokesman and I refused to debate with him in public, although I would have been more than happy to have debated with a Minister.
	I understand that the Minister was busy that day, but I was with a Health Minister on the train to Manchester—the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis) was a Health Minister at the time. I said to him, "Fantastic, you are obviously coming to the BDA conference to represent the Government." He replied, "No, I am going home." The only person who was representing the Government was the chief dental officer, and that was fundamentally unfair on him, because he was put in a position that only an elected Minister should be put in.
	As the process goes on and as this contract is reviewed, I am very concerned about whether the Government will have the courage to admit how much of the contract they have got wrong and how much of it has affected people in this country. We see reports in the press of people extracting their teeth with pliers and people going to the pharmacists to get do-it-yourself fillings, which are available in most pharmacists in this country, because of the lack of NHS dentistry. That might be down to fear; it may not be fact, but the perception of a lack of such dentistry exists.
	We have discussed the UDAs at length today. It cannot be right that in band 2 up to six fillings or one root canal or an extraction can be carried out. The obvious situation to consider is that of a dentist who is under pressure. What is such a dentist going to do? I hope that all dentists do what is right for the patient, but given that they are looking at the UDA rather than at the outcomes, it is obvious that, at times, real problems will arise. Many dentists have said that they are not willing to work under this contract and they have walked away, and we have to encourage them to come back.
	One area of the report that concerned me—this issue came up when I was on the Select Committee and we were examining charging—was the bit dealing with dentists who say "I will keep your children on only if you take me on as a private dentist." Such an approach is fundamentally wrong, because it is blackmailing people by saying that they can have NHS dentistry only if they pay for a private insurance plan or they pay as they go. But I think that we have to accept the fact that because so few dentists have been working in some parts of this country, I cannot, at this stage, see anything wrong with a dentist who is willing to take on a child, with no strings attached, under an NHS contract. That is better than nothing, and we need to examine such an approach. I know that the Select Committee was concerned about people being pressurised into certain things. That is fundamentally wrong, but if we can encourage private dentists to come back into NHS dentistry and take children on without any strings attached, that has to be good. On average, children have 1.5 fillings or extractions by the age of five, so the oral hygiene of our youngsters is going in the wrong direction. If we do not address children's oral health problems, that will have an effect as they get older. It is therefore vital to address the issue of oral health in the young.
	We have to encourage more dentists to come back into NHS dentistry. We have to look seriously at the court case earlier this week, which the Government lost on appeal when a dentist objected to the fact that, whether he had performed well or poorly, the PCT could remove his contract at any time. The courts ruled that that was wrong. We should extend the length of contracts, so that dentists can invest in their practices. PCTs do not pay for surgeries or equipment: the investment has to be made by the dentists themselves. There must also be a presumption that should a dentist want to move on or retire, they have the right to sell on the goodwill in their contract. If we want dentists to come back into the NHS, or young dentists coming out of training schools—I have visited them and they are fantastic—to come into the NHS, we must give them the confidence to do so, especially in this difficult economic climate.
	I agree completely with the Committee: if we want to understand what is happening to dental hygiene in this country, we have to have registration and a per capita system; otherwise, we will not have a national health service. Instead, we will have the postcode lottery that has put NHS dentistry into crisis today. I welcome the report and I congratulate the Committee on it.

Ann Keen: The fact remains that two dental schools were closed under the previous Administration, and that they have been opened by the present Government.
	As I said, the new contract is based on dental services locally commissioned by PCTs to meet the needs of people seeking care in their areas. We have shown our commitment to increasing access to NHS dental services by increased investment of 11 per cent. in the current year. Next year, we will invest a further 8.5 per cent., for a total increase of £385 million over the two years.
	We have reinforced that commitment in the NHS operating framework for 2009 by stating that PCTs should aim to provide access for anyone who seeks help in accessing NHS dentistry. In 2006, a significant number of dentists chose not to accept their new contracts. The level of service that they represented was 3.6 per cent. and, in patient terms, that was the equivalent of services for around 1 million patients. This loss is still reflected in the 24-month access data published by the information centre.
	The number of dentists providing NHS treatment in 2007-08 increased by 655. So although the dentists who refused the new contracts in 2006 were lost, the number of dentists has started to grow again. The number of courses of treatment delivered in 2007-08 was 2.7 per cent. higher than in 2006-07, and the figures that the information centre published in November show that courses of treatment delivered in the first quarter of the current year are on course to be 3 per cent. higher.
	Looking forward, the figures show that PCTs this year have commissioned more dental services than ever. This increase in activity will show in the access data very soon, but locally it is already visible in the form of new practices opening and of existing contracts being grown.
	Despite the national figures, many PCTs are already ahead of the game. Some 30 per cent. of PCTs have actually increased dental access from March 2006. Some have done very well. The Isle of Wight, for example, has increased dental access by 24 per cent., while both the Medway and the Telford and Wrekin PCTs have increased it by 17 per cent. Those figures hardly support the view that the new contract somehow causes access to reduce, but I accept that other PCTs need to move further and faster on access. The new commitment in the operating framework gives PCTs a clear signal as to the priority that we place on access.
	In my constituency, dentists have developed and run an outreach project to apply fluoride varnishes to children's teeth to protect them from decay. At the same time, they have put the parents in touch with local dental services. There are many other examples around the country of similar initiatives that can be carried out as part of the contract.
	The Select Committee was told to expect a mass exodus from the NHS in April 2009. We do not see any sign of that, although some practices that previously have employed a restricted contract approach to their NHS commitment may find that the PCT proposes a contract value that more properly reflects its commitment to the NHS. Such practices tend to offer child-only contracts, or contracts for exempt patients only.
	In conclusion, the past three of four years have been turbulent and unsettling. We now need to move forward with the profession, using the increased investment and larger work force as part of a greater focus on providing NHS dental services that we can be proud of.
	I am proud of our NHS dentists; they work hard. They have worked hard for all of us, with a difficult contract. We will make sure that the evidence from our review, and the evidence in the Health Committee report, which my Department welcomes, will continue to strengthen access to dentistry in all our constituencies.
	 Debate interrupted, and Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54(4).
	 The Speaker put the deferred Questions (Standing Order No. 54(5)).

Resolved,
	That, for the year ending with 31 March 2010, for expenditure by the Department of Health—
	(1) resources, not exceeding £33,990,717,000, be authorised, on account, for use as set out in HC 1039 of Session 2007-08, and
	(2) a sum, not exceeding £33,474,467,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the
	Consolidated Fund, on account, to meet the costs as so set out.
	 The Speaker then put the Questions on the outstanding Estimates (Standing Order No. 55).

Resolved,
	That, for the year ending with 31 March 2010—
	(1) resources, not exceeding £168,435,164,000, be authorised, on account, for use for defence and civil services as set out in HC 1039, HC 1136, HC 1160 and HC 1171, of Session 2007-08, and
	(2) a sum, not exceeding £160,963,839,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, to meet the costs of defence and civil services as so set out.— (Ian Lucas.)
	 Ordered, That a Bill be brought in upon the foregoing Resolutions;
	That the Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Yvette Cooper, Angela Eagle, Ian Pearson and Mr. Stephen Timms introduce the Bill.

William Cash: Further to that statement, if I may, Mr. Speaker. This is very important. The question of whether article 9 of the Bill of Rights provides for the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to be overridden by that article in proceedings in Parliament is the question before the House. The complaint of privilege that I have made effectively states, as you know, Mr Speaker, that article 9 overrides PACE in respect of the precincts of the House. That is a matter on which the Standards and Privileges Committee must adjudicate in due course if a motion is passed. I believe that that is the position, if I may say so with respect, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has almost taken the words out of my mouth. He has raised an important matter, and the hon. Member for Stone has raised a point of order, too. As I have stated, I have just come down to chair proceedings, as is traditional for me, to see the last piece of business out before the evening is over. It is best that I take the points of order that both hon. Gentlemen have raised, consider them overnight, and take advice from my advisers and allow the night's business to proceed. I promise that I will come back to the House as soon as I possibly can on this matter, and of course that will be before the week is out. I thank the hon. hon. Gentlemen for raising their points of order.

Norman Baker: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise in an Adjournment debate what I regard as an important matter. It arises from the oral exchange that took place on 30 June between myself and the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, following my giving him a couple of examples of physical contact issues relating to teachers and children in their schools.
	Let me reprise those examples briefly. One instance involved a little girl who had fallen over and injured herself in the playground and was clearly distressed, but the teacher felt unable to put her arm around her and comfort her as she would like to have done. For the child in question, that was a distressing and inexplicable situation. Someone whom she regarded as effectively a surrogate parent in the school situation was not comforting her, as she would have expected. The second instance, which is rather different, occurred when a young lad who was causing some difficulties for his teacher put himself under a desk in the school and refused to come out. The teacher felt unable to remove the child from under the desk. There he remained until his parents were called, completely disrupting the education of the rest of the class.
	The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families said in reply:
	"The common-sense thing would be for the hon. Gentleman to advise that school that there is no reason at all not to provide such comfort and support—whether the issue is about reasonable restraint or comfort. Of course teachers should be comforting children. Rather than raise the matter with me, the hon. Gentleman should go back to the school and tell its staff that they should have given that comfort and that they should do so in future."—[ Official Report, 30 June 2008; Vol. 478, c. 588.]
	That was the answer from the Minister's colleague, so I went back not just to that school, but all local schools to test whether those were isolated incidents or whether there was a more general problem. I wrote—in neutral terms, I assure the Minister—to all the schools in my constituency to ask about the matter and whether they thought there was a problem. Not all the schools replied, but 90 per cent. of those that responded indicated that they felt there was a problem, and gave me further instances of how that problem manifested itself. The Minister will understand that it is not sensible to revel the names of the schools here, but if she wishes to have those names, I am happy to provide them subsequently.
	One primary school head teacher wrote to me:
	"We have the children for many hours a day and often have to pick up the pieces when there are bereavements, parental arguments/separations/divorces that affect the children deeply. Many children trust us implicitly and to not be able to comfort a child is distressing for all concerned. Many teachers have said that they have refrained from contact due to the fear of unfounded allegations being made."
	Another primary school head teacher wrote:
	"Children have become aware of this issue and on some occasions put additional pressures on staff. We had at least four occasions in the last academic year when older children have told members of staff, 'You can't touch me', and, 'If you touch me, I'll tell my mum and she'll get you sacked', and even on one occasion"—
	this is the head teacher himself who was told this by a rude and defiant 11-year-old—that was his description—
	"that if I kept him in at lunch time, he would tell his mum that I'd hurt him."
	One secondary school head teacher wrote:
	"The nature of investigations"
	into assault allegations by children
	"give the impression to others that staff are guilty",
	because they are immediately suspended. The head teacher went on:
	"Investigations can be long and tortuous; even when teachers are shown to be innocent after a long investigation, some mud sticks and their reputation may not fully recover—it is probably impossible to return to work unscathed by the experience."
	I stress to the Minister that those are the words of head teachers. Another secondary head teacher wrote this:
	"I asked a student, who had misbehaved, to leave a corridor. He made no effort to comply. I placed a hand on the back of his shoulder to guide him out of a door to which he responded by immediately phoning the police on his mobile telling them that he had been assaulted by the headteacher. Luckily for me there were many witnesses present."
	There is a problem here that needs to be addressed. Another head talked about students who
	"exploit teachers' vulnerabilities which undermines discipline."
	Another said:
	"This is an important issue and Ed Balls's answer"—
	I quoted that to the Minister earlier—
	"does not address the very real dilemma faced by teachers."
	Ninety per cent. of respondents indicated that there had been such incidents in their own schools and they were happy to relay them and explain in detail what had happened on individual occasions. All of them said that there had been occasions when they believed that children had made unfounded allegations just to cause difficulties for the teacher, and all said that had it not been for CCTV or witnesses who happened to be nearby, there would have been serious difficulty in refuting some of the allegations. Another head teacher said:
	"I strongly agree that teachers refrain from contact, even when it may be appropriate, for fear of allegations."
	I hope that the Minister accepts that there is a problem.
	At this point, I should say that I am grateful to my local evening paper,  The Argus, which has been very supportive of my campaign. In fact, it ran an editorial about how classroom disruption—it was referring to the lad under the table—
	"puts the brake on everybody's progress."
	It went on:
	"When lessons are interrupted, all our children are learning is how much they can get away with."
	That is a genuine concern; what we are talking about is not only protecting teachers, which is appropriate anyway, but protecting the children who behave properly, as most children do. They want to learn, but see the odd child misbehaving and getting away with it. I am not clear what message that gives, but I am sure that it is not appropriate.
	I have raised the issue in writing subsequently with the Minister's colleagues. On 23 October, I had a reply from Baroness Morgan, who is in the Minister's Department. She said that revised guidance on the use of force to control or restrain pupils had been issued in November 2007; no doubt the Minister will refer to that. I have looked at that guidance, and let me say quite honestly that there is nothing particularly wrong with it; it is sensible and strikes the right balance.
	I have also looked at the extensive physical contact guidance for school and other education staff offered by my own local authority, East Sussex county council. It is a big document, which all schools in my area have been given. Again, I do not have a problem with the content; the issue appears to be that the guidance itself is not enough. Notwithstanding the fact that the guidance may be sound, it is clear that teachers are not happy following it for fear of unfounded allegations. When such allegations are made, it seems that teachers are regarded almost as guilty until proven innocent; they are often suspended and have a cloud hanging over them. As a consequence, common-sense, sensible physical contacts, which in a logical world all of us would wish to see—comforting a child who has hurt herself, dealing with a child who is disrupting the whole class—are not being carried out, notwithstanding the guidance that would support such contact, because teachers are afraid of the consequences of following the guidance.
	I want to draw that particular issue to the Minister's attention. I am not criticising the guidelines or the Government, but saying that there is a problem with teachers, who, from the evidence that I have seen, do not have confidence that if they follow the guidelines they will be supported in the event of being challenged. One of the ways to tackle the issue is for the Government to make it absolutely clear that when teachers are in the classroom or school, they are effectively in loco parentis.
	The Minister may say that that is the position, but the reality is that in the case of the boy under the desk the teacher would not remove him but the parents were called to do so. In that teacher's mind, there was a difference between the power that he was able to exercise legally, or wisely, and the power that the parents could exercise. There should not be a distinction in those matters. The teacher should have the same responsibilities and powers as the parents when the children are in school. I am interested to know whether the Minister can confirm that that is the case and, if so, what she will do to reinforce it through guidance and information to our teachers.
	The next issue is what happens when an allegation is made. I suppose that there are a minority of occasions when the allegation is well founded; one cannot deny that that may be so. However, I am absolutely sure that the majority of allegations made against teachers are not well founded, and in those circumstances it is wrong for teachers to be suspended and to have a cloud hanging over them while investigations take place and the police are called. I have lots of examples for the Minister of where the police have been called and have turned up and questioned teachers at great length. Let us think about the power trip that children are given when they call in the police and have teachers held before them answering questions—what an attractive proposition that is for certain young minds. That is inappropriate. There must be an assumption that, unless there is very clear evidence to the contrary, a teacher is probably innocent and should be allowed to carry on in their work. Obviously, if someone has witnessed something horrendous, that is a different situation, but in most cases a teacher should be presumed to be innocent and allowed to carry on. Children should not be given the power to have the teacher suspended or subjected to police investigation, sometimes very overtly.
	I am concerned that we do not collectively do enough to support our teachers. I have encountered examples in my constituency—it is a law-abiding constituency, so if it is happening there it is happening elsewhere—of what sometimes happens when a teacher attempts to enforce discipline in a way that all of us in this House would think entirely appropriate. When they keep a child in for detention, the parents arrive and attack the teacher, sometimes physically, and sometimes in front of the children. There is a real problem with a minority of parents who, on occasion, do not support the teachers. I do not know what the answer is, I freely confess, but I recognise the problem, and we have to try to deal with it. If the Minister has something helpful to say, it would be very welcome.
	Finally, I want to draw attention to an unfortunate compensation culture within our schools, which is part of the same problem. This is from an article in  The Argus headed "£80,000 bill for Sussex school injuries":
	"A ten-year-old boy who pulled his hamstring at school was awarded more than £6,500 in compensation...Another pupil was given £4,200 for slipping on ice in the playground".
	That kind of arrangement is not appropriate in our schools. All of us, when we were at school, went out in the playground, and no doubt we all slipped over on ice at some point. It is not appropriate to sue schools or for them to pay out £4,200. If we get to a situation whereby the children feel that they have power over the teacher in terms of the police and allegations that they can make, and power over the local authority in terms of being able to sue for costs, no doubt through their parents, we are creating a society full of people who have unrealistic expectations and will not adjust properly to the real world when they get outside school.
	Not only in the interests of teachers, but in the interests of children, we need to do more than we have done. The Government have got their guidance right—I do not criticise them about that—but there is a problem, and if the Minister has some sensible suggestions to make I would be very pleased to hear them.